A rose by any other name…? Behind the 2013 Conclave.
It won’t shock most of you that leading up to and during a conclave to elect a new Pope that there might be some … wheeling and dealing.
Wheeling and dealing doesn’t quite describe, however, the machinations of liberal, progressivist cardinals leading up to the conclave of 2013.
Look at the piece at the National Catholic Register by Edward Pentin (probably the best English language Vaticanista right now) about, firstly, the new biography of Card. Danneels and, thusly, the “St. Gallen Group”, a kind of liberal mafia of cardinals who met regularly to figure out how to change the Church.
Cardinal Danneels’ Biographers Retract Comments on St. Gallen Group
But the cardinal’s assertion that the secretive “mafia-like” group existed and opposed Joseph Ratzinger still stands.The authors of a new authorized biography of Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the archbishop emeritus of Mechelen-Brussels, have issued a correction to earlier comments quoted in a Belgian newspaper and which I reported here.
Karim Schelkens and Jürgen Mettepenningen, authors of Godfried Danneels Biographie, have stressed that the “St. Gallen club” of reformist prelates was not a lobby group that prepared for Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to be elected Pope.
They say their quote in the original article in “Le Vif”, which had said “the election of Bergoglio was prepared in St. Gallen” by Cardinal Danneels and others, was a mistake made “after their approval and correction” of the quote.
Now they have stated that the “election of Bergoglio corresponded with the aims of St. Gallen, on that there is no doubt. And the outline of its program was that of Danneels and his confreres who had been discussing it for ten years.”
They stressed that, as this goal was not met in the 2005 conclave, and the St. Gallen club no longer convened after 2006, their original quote gave the false impression that it was a lobby group rather than an informal one. Cardinal Danneels this week referred to it as a kind of “mafia” club.
Despite this, according to the new biography, after 2003 the St. Gallen group became of “strategic importance” with regards the 2005 conclave.
The authors stress in the book that with its array of members including Cardinals José da Cruz Policarpo, then Patriarch of Lisbon, as well as Cardinals Martini, Danneels, Murphy-O’Connor, Silvestrini, Husar, Kasper and Lehmann, members of the St. Gallen group felt it could have “significant impact” if each of them used their network of contacts.
[…]
Pentin goes on to describe how the author Austin Ivereigh wrote about “Team Bergoglio” worked inside the conclave to promote their candidate.
A rose by any other name…?
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