The tyranny of Liberalism,

and the false hope of Libertarianism.

 

We're fools

Remember when the MAGA Jab was bad???

www.eponymousflower.com/DemsWon'tTakeTheJab

Heir to the Throne of Brazil Passes

Edit: what will this mean for TFP and monarchism in Brazil?

[Brazil] The devout heir to the Imperial family, died this Friday (15), aged 84, in São Paulo, according to the secretary of the Imperial House of Brazil. The celibate, saintly monarch died without issue.

Princess Isabel's great-grandson, Dom Luiz had been hospitalized at Hospital Santa Catarina, in central São Paulo, since June 10.  His health status was considered irreversible by the medical team that accompanied him.  During the period of hospitalization, he has already had two passages through the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and, since Sunday (10), he was in a room.

"We fulfill the painful duty of communicating the death of His Imperial and Royal Highness Prince Dom Luiz de Orleans e Bragança, Head of the Imperial House of Brazil, who, today, July 15, 2022, in the city of São Paulo, at 84 years of age, comforted with the Sacraments of the Holy Church and the Apostolic Blessing, God Our Lord saw fit to call to Himself", says a post on the social network of Casa Imperial.

AMDG

Holiness, What Are the Reasons For the Liturgical Crisis

 

Why doesn't Pope Francis call things by their proper name when he correctly identifies a liturgical crisis but fails to draw the necessary conclusions?

By Cristina Siccardi*

The Holy See takes no position on the profanations and blasphemies that are constantly committed in society, for example in gay prides or in contemporary "art", which unrestrainedly incites against the Catholic religion. Rather, the denigration of faith is carried out today as a matter of course in the churches themselves, with the consent of the pastors, who are blinded by the anti-liturgical wave.

 

Scalfari, The Bard of the Bergoglian Double-Magisterium Has Died

 

Eugenio the friend of the pope, or: The pope who had a freemason and atheist as a friend and did not convert him.

(Rome) Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist friend of Pope Francis, died yesterday. The newspaper La Repubblica published an obituary by Pope Francis today about the founder of this newspaper. The relationship between Pope Francis and Masonic atheist Eugenio Scalfari is among the most telling and enigmatic pages of the current pontificate. It is significant and puzzling, if not surprising, that the obituary is a eulogy.

Eugenio Scalfari, born in 1924, was a journalist and publicist all of his professional life, he came from an upper-class family with a long Masonic tradition, earned his first spurs in fascist daily newspapers and was a co-founder of the radical-liberal, anti-clerical Radical Party in 1955, 1962-1968 editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Espresso (comparable to the German Spiegel), as an independent member of parliament for the Socialists till 1972, in 1976 he founded the daily newspaper La Repubblica to the left of the upper-class liberal Corriere della Sera, of which he was editor-in-chief until 1996 and then its publisher. His self-description was, an atheist. Although he never described himself as a Freemason, he was happy to show the ancestral gallery of his direct ancestors, who were brothers in the lodge.

The editors chose the following words as the headline for the papal obituary:

"Eugenio, my laicist [secularist] friend, I will m[iss talking to you."

 

Son from a good family with a generation-old credo of the Grand Orient

Since the 1950s, Scalfari himself has been involved in every socio-political struggle intended to lead the world a little further to the left. In addition to the political right, the main targets of his media activism were the indissolubility of marriage, the inviolability of human life and again and again the Catholic Church and its dogmas. He was successful as an extra-parliamentary spokesman in many struggles: in the 1970s, divorce and abortion were legalized, as were “gay marriage” and euthanasia a few years ago.

It was all the more striking that Pope Francis found his most enthusiastic fans, one cannot call it any other way, in the ranks of the anti-Church Radical Party, that radical liberal micro-party which, as a hinge between the Marxist left and left-liberal bourgeoisie, exerted great influence on political developments in Italy and beyond. The bandwidth of these fans ranged from Marco Pannella to Emma Bonino ( after all, former Foreign Minister, EU Commissioner and Soros Prize winner and for Pope Francis a "very big one") to the now deceased Eugenio Scalfari.

All of them came from well-to-do bourgeois families, were open to Socialism, but never joined communism, but internalized the emancipatory drive of liberalism, which still predates socialism, which is why they were able to become leading exponents of the political left in numerous struggles. Their fight was for the legalization of divorce, abortion, euthanasia, drugs and "gay rights". As a powerful doyen of Italian left-wing journalism, Eugenio Scalfari led this struggle from the columns of the daily newspaper he had founded.

Marco Pannella, the "Mangiapreti" (priest-eater), another of Scalfari's friends, became an "electrified" fan of Francis. Pannella, who died in 2016, still had under Pope Benedict XVI. demonstrated against the Church on St. Peter's Square with the slogan "No Taliban, No Vatican" and put the Vatican on the same level as the Islamist Taliban. Under Pope Francis, the same Pannella exclaimed, unforgettably: 

"Viva il papa! We radicals love him very much”, so much so that Pannella wished: “I want to become a citizen of the Vatican”.

 

Pannella and Scalfari were two leading founders of the Radical Party.

Eugenio Scalfari is decorated by the Duce of Fascism Benito Mussolini.

Eugenio Scalfari's interviews with Pope Francis became downright notorious. In November 2014, Katholisches.info wrote for clarification:

"The jubilation of the Scalfari and Pannella is not the jubilation of those who have found or rediscovered faith, but of those who feel they have 'conquered' even the Vatican with their positions."

How could such adamant abortion lobbyists see Francis as a "friend"? Were they even deceived by the Pope, as some of their supporters suspected? Nothing like that.

Bergoglio made it clear at the beginning of his pontificate that the struggle for "non-negotiable values" is not his struggle. Rather, he made a serious break and described the attitude of his predecessors in the question of the right to life as "obsessed". Francis did not formally change the Magisterium in a very Bergoglian way, but in fact he did, entirely in accordance with the principle he advocated that practice comes before theory. For Scalfari and Pannella, this counted for far more than an occasional but inconsequential criticism of the killing of unborn children. Francis' recent stabs in the back at the majority of US bishops on the communion issue for abortion politicians reinforced this papal maxim.

In this way, Francis was able to establish an unofficial, parallel teaching post , the bard of which was his friend Eugenio Scalfari. This "new magisterium", also known as the " Scalfari magisterium" and never really denied by the Holy See, promulgated a new doctrine more like that of the Lodge than the Church. In 2019, all the conversations, interviews and phone calls that Scalfari subsequently reported to the world were collected in the book I l Dio unico e la società moderna' ('One God and Modern Society'). It contains all the statements of the reigning pope that caused considerable irritation in the church in the past and will probably do so in the future. Scalfari always insisted on their authenticity - unchallenged. Scalfari clarified a bridging in the subtitle of the book, because the publication included all "meetings with Pope Francis and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini". The latter had already died in 2012, not without Benedict XVI two months before his death. vigorously urged to resign.

In 2019, Katholisches.info wrote :

“Eugenio Scalfari is twelve years older than the Catholic Church leader. How can their relationship, which is obviously deliberately surrounded by an aura of the unclear and opaque, be described? Most likely as congenial, since a certain kinship of spirit can hardly be denied after six years of irregular 'collaboration', which has continued despite all the criticism."

Tenets of the Bergoglian Scalfari Magisterium are:

• 
  
• that for Christians there is no "absolute truth";
• that good and bad are merely subjective opinions;
• that there is "no Catholic God";
• that Mary the Blessed Mother under the cross perhaps wanted to ask herself whether she had been "tricked" because the messianic promises must have seemed like "lies" to her;
• that Jesus Christ is “not” the Son of God;
• that "sin is done away with";
• that "hell is abolished";
• that mankind should merge into a “mestizo” through racial mixing;
• that conversion is not necessary.

The atheist Scalfari wanted to "build a tailor-made, fluid and relativistic Christianity", according to Il Giornale at the end  of 2013. And Francis supported him in this.

The Vatican spokesman at the time, Fr. Federico Lombardi, objected embarrassed and half-heartedly, but soon realized that Santa Marta had not issued any order for a denial. So the statements remained unexplained in the room. It was obviously intentional. Even more: The Vatican publishing house even published the first and most irritating interview in book form . It probably doesn't need any more confirmation. 

In 2019 the second book " Grand Hotel Scalfari. Confessioni libertine su un secolo di carta” (“Grand Hotel Scalfari. Libertine Confessions over a Century of Paper”, Marsilio Editori, 2019), a benevolently conceived biography in the form of a conversation book. Katholisches.info wrote enlighteningly :

Handshake between Christian Democrat De Mita (right) and Communist Berlinguer. Eugenio Scalfari acted as mediator of the "Historical Compromise". Keep moving the country to the left.

“Scalfari, who has long since given up the editorship, has retained his weight and his column. Some, including Catholics, lulled by accusations of spreading conspiracy theories, don't like to hear it, but it's important for Scalfari: he's proud of his Masonic heritage. Although he is silent about his own affiliation with a lodge, he likes to point out that his grandfather and his great-grandfather and his great-great... were brothers and founders of the lodge. 'My ancestors founded lodges all over the Catanzaro area', Scalfari himself quotes in the book as a Masonic friend who said of his grandfather, a 'staunch socialist', that he was 'like an old Lucifer who catches fire'. Similar allusions abound throughout this book, while he suggests, more clearly than before, that he entered the lodge in San Remo immediately after the war. He does this, not without pointing out that in 1874 the Lodge in San RemoLiguria , predecessor of the lodges that work there today, and published the newspaper Lucifero ( Lucifer ). For the brothers in the lodge, Lucifer is not the personified evil of Christianity, but the 'bringer of light' who is worshiped in lodges and whose knowledge is striven for.”

Having said that, we publish Pope Francis' obituary of his friend Eugenio Scalfari:

"Eugenio, my lay friend, I will miss talking to you"

by Pope Francis

I am saddened by the death of Eugenio Scalfari, founder of La Repubblica newspaper. In these painful 

hours, I am close to his family, loved ones and all those who knew and worked with him. He has been a loyal friend to me. I remember him telling me at our meetings at Casa Santa Marta how he was trying to grasp the meaning of existence and life, exploring everyday life and the future through meditation on his experiences and his great readings. He described himself as a non-believer, although in the years I've known him, I've also thought deeply about the meaning of faith. He always wondered about the presence of God, about the last things and about the life after this life.

Our conversations were pleasant and intense, the minutes with him flew by, punctuated by the cheerful confrontation of our respective opinions and the exchange of our thoughts and ideas, but also by moments of joy.

We talked about faith and worldliness, about everyday life and the great horizons of humanity in the present and future, and about the darkness that can envelop man and the divine light that can illuminate his path. I remember him as a man of extraordinary intelligence and an ability to listen, always searching for the ultimate meaning of events, and always eager for knowledge and testimonies that might enrich the understanding of modernity.

Eugenio was an intellectual open to the present, courageous, transparent in describing his fears, never nostalgic for the glorious past but looking forward, with a touch of disillusionment but also with high hopes for a better world. And he was excited and in love with his work as a journalist. He left an indelible mark on the lives of many and charted a career path that many of his collaborators and successors have followed.

At the beginning of our exchanges by letter and telephone, and during our initial conversations, he had expressed his astonishment at my decision to call me Francis and wanted to understand the reasons for my decision. And then he was very fascinated by my work as a chaplain of the universal church, and in this sense, he argued aloud and in his articles about the church's commitment to interreligious and ecumenical dialogue, about the mystery of the Lord, about God, source of peace and Source of paths of concrete brotherhood between individuals, nations and peoples.

He emphasized the crucial value - for our society and for politics - of sincere, fruitful and continuous relations between believers and non-believers. He was fascinated by various theological issues, such as mysticism in the Catholic religion and the passage in Genesis that states that man was created in the image and likeness of God. And the composition and characteristics of the population groups that will inhabit the common house in the coming decades.

From this day on, I will keep in my heart the kind and precious memory of the conversations I had with Eugene during those years of my pontificate. I pray for him and for the consolation of those who mourn him.

And I commend his soul to God for eternity.

Text/Translation: Giuseppe Nardi

Photocredit: Wikicommons

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

AMDG

Nos hemos vuelto locos!

Society of Saint Pius X Continues to Grow — Sets New Record at 700 Priests

 

Priestly ordinations of the Society of Pius 2022 in the USA.

 (Menzingen) The Society of St. Pius X (FSSPX) has more than 700 priests for the first time.  The growth is unbroken.  The Society of St. Pius, as the community of priests founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre is commonly known, is growing and thriving.  Not everyone in the church is happy about this.

 This is not just about those who are unhappy that the Society is attracting vocations, but about those who seem to have problems with priestly vocations in general.  Cardinal Raymond Burke said in 2019:

 "Anyone who wants a 'different church' does not want priestly vocations".

The decline in priestly vocations is often self-inflicted.  There are various reasons for this, ranging from a “different” understanding of the church to wrong prioritization.  The most recent example was provided by the Corona hysteria, when bishops and leaders of diocesan seminaries south and north of the Alps rejected candidates and threw out seminarians because they did not allow themselves to be “vaccinated” with a genetically modified Covid preparation.

When certain Church circles occasionally complain about the lack of vocations, as in the run-up to the Amazon Synod, this usually serves other purposes.

In Santa Marta, too, the view seems clouded, because Pope Francis is waging a campaign against diocesan bishops and religious orders whose seminaries are particularly well filled or vocations are particularly numerous.  Anyone who "stands out" in this way seems to be annoying.  The confreres in the bishops' conferences feel disturbed with empty seminaries, and apparently Pope Francis also feels disturbed.  The dioceses of Ciudad del Este (Paraguay), San Rafael (Argentina) and Fréjus-Toulon (France) are three well-known examples, as is the Order of the Franciscans of the Immaculate or the Society of the Holy Apostles, all of which have been the target of papal intervention.

The shocking experience of a newly ordained French priest in Santa Marta is significant.

The capricious thought needs to be clarified: when a diocese or a religious order attracts numerous vocations, it is obviously not a reason for Pope Francis to rejoice or even be interested in carefully learning the reasons or the charisms that lead to such a pleasant development  have led.  On the contrary, those who have many vocations are suspicious, automatically placed under disapproving observation, subjected to a visitation... and sometimes radically crushing the work (deposition of the bishop, closure of the seminary, dissolution of the Order...).

Society of Saint Pius X with a new high

The SSPX announced a few days ago that, thanks to the ordinations that have just taken place in their seminaries in the northern hemisphere, for the first time they have more than 700 priests.  Considering the Church as a whole, that is not so much, and yet, as the past has shown, it is a vigorously thriving seed.  The SSPX is thriving, and so are a number of communities that have come out of it in one form or another.

This new record is causing considerable concern in some Church circles.  In contrast to the dioceses and religious orders mentioned, the Society of Saint Pius X is not open to disciplinary or even final interventions by Rome in terms of canon law.

On the occasion of the new high, the Society of Saint Pius X published a statement last Friday:

 "As wished by Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre, his original mission to the Society of St. Pius X (FSSPX) will continue with 'all the works necessary for priestly formation'."

With the ordinations in the Northern Hemisphere, the Society now numbers 707 priests.  In the past few days, 17 new priests were ordained there: six in the USA, eight in Switzerland and three in the Federal Republic of Germany.  Twelve deacons were ordained this year.

The Superior General of the SSPX, Father Davide Pagliarani, is quoted in the statement as saying:

 “The Society of St. Pius X has a duty to help all those souls who are currently dismayed and discouraged.  First of all, we have the duty to assure them, through the facts themselves, that the Tridentine Mass can never disappear from the face of the earth: it is an extremely necessary sign of hope.  Moreover, each of us, whether priest or believer, must lend them a helping hand, because those who do not wish to share the goods from which they benefit are in fact making themselves unworthy of these goods.  Only in this way will we truly love souls and the Church.”

With this "desire to work for the good of the universal Church", the intervention of our Lord is "gratefully recognized" in the "enormous growth" of the Society of St.

 This growth in the number of those who "work for the complete restoration of the Catholic priesthood and of the traditional Mass" is a joy, but should not make one arrogant or lead one to think that this is the work of man, nor should one  satisfied with this milestone," the statement said, because "much remains to be done."

The Society of Saint Pius also refers to other ancient ritual communities.  It is "important" to take their number into account.  The Society of St. Peter therefore has 341 priests, the Institute of Christ the King and High Priest 80 priests and the Institut du Bon Pasteur around 50 priests, which are the three most important former so-called Ecclesia Dei communities.

The statement closes with a word from Superior General Pagliarani on the subject of priestly vocations:

 “We entrust these intentions to the Sorrowful Mother, to whom we address our prayers, because no one has penetrated the mystery of our Lord's sacrifice and his victory on the cross better than she, for no one has been so intimately connected to his passion and triumph.  Our Lord has put the whole world into her hands.”

 Text: Giuseppe Nardi

 Image: FSSPX

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

 See also:

 How many vocations does a March for the Rainforestl inspire?

AMDG

Orthodox Bishop Baptizes Child of Two Aberrosexuals

 Edit: join the Orthodox Church, they said. There is doctrinal purity, they said…. 

Orthodox schismatic bishop holds first aberrobaptism of aberrosexual “parents”.

AMDG

Greatest crime in history?

Jewish Mayor Powerless to Stop Mass Shootings in “Little Mogadishu”

Edit: he encouraged this as we said when this happened by cowering to the black militants, Mohamedans and Soros rioters. Others, like Mark Shea and Pastor Dale Alquist, rushed to support this Marxist BLM agenda. 

The media doesn’t have much of an interest in mass shootings by Islamic corsairs.

 AMDG

WWll Luftwaffe Flak-Helfer

Bishop Barron rebuked by a Converso dressed as a female religious

Still relevant after more than a year

Mega-Interview from Pope Francis: "I don't like how the world is overcoming the pandemic"

About Corona, climate and disinformation: "Without the commitment of young people, we are finished" 

Mega interview with Pope Francis

Edit: his adulation and admiration for the murdering, bloodthirsty figures of the Latin American revolution was what caught my attention. 

Rome) Pope Francis granted an extensive exclusive interview to the Argentine press agency Télam, which was published yesterday at noon Roman time. However, it was not entirely “exclusive”. In the past, there have been some disagreements between the Communications Dicastery established by Francis and his arbitrary interviewing activities. As is well known, this happened repeatedly without regard to their own ministry. It was different this time.

In the past few years, it could be that those responsible for communications at the Holy See only found out about interviews with the Pope from the media. Santa Marta didn't bother to notify the proper authorities.

So it was that the Vatican media, such as VaticanNews and the Osservatore Romano, lagged behind the secular media and only published excerpts of the interviews. This, in turn, did not satisfy Francis, who wanted people to be able to read and hear his statements directly and fully.

In this regard, there seem to have been refinements: the Télam interview was made available to the Vatican media in advance so that translations could be made. When the original Spanish version of the interview was published, the Vatican media were able to publish translations in other languages that had already been prepared. VaticanNews published the papal responses in English and Italian. The Osservatore Romano was able to print the original version in its Spanish weekly edition that appeared yesterday, for which it needed four pages. The German service of VaticanNews. On the other hand, as in the past, contented itself with making only an abridged version available to the readership.

Katholisches.info initially wanted to publish the complete interview in an annotated version. We don't do that. The readers can get an unbiased picture. Some comments are still allowed, but will only be added at the end.

Own logo for the interview

Trudeau vs. Canada

Based Mexican President Says US Run by Jewish Mafia

 Edit: coup in 1…2…

AMDG

The Death of a Pope Whisperer

German-born Cardinal Claudio Hummes, Pope Francis' governor in Brazil, died yesterday at the age of 88.

(Brasilia) The Archdiocese of São Paulo announced the death of Cardinal Cláudio Hummes at the age of 87. Cardinal Hummes was Pope Francis' lieutenant in Brazil and one of the major promoters of the Amazon Synod, which, along with the Synod on the Family, was the largest project of the current pontificate to date. Overall, Hummes was one of the most influential voices for the progressive paradigm shift under Francis. The pope called him a "very, very good friend".

Odilo Cardinal Scherer, the incumbent Archbishop of São Paulo yesterday issued a "Message of Sorrow and Hope" announcing that the burial will take place in São Paulo Cathedral:

"It is with great sadness that I announce the death of Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, (...) today, after a long illness that he endured with patience and trust in God."

It was Hummes who, as Francis himself said, said immediately after his election in 2013: "Don't forget the poor". It was he who recommended that the newly elected man call himself Francis. The long history will only be briefly outlined.

Hummes' rise

Archbishop Hummes with Lula da Silva 1989

Pope Benedict XVI had appointed the Archbishop of São Paulo to the Roman Curia despite his progressive attitude. This was a frequently practiced but not always successful attempt to remove critics of a pontificate from their dioceses and at the same time integrate them in Rome. John Paul II had failed with Cardinal Walter Kasper, Benedict XVI failed with Cardinal Hummes.

Cláudio Hummes, born in 1934 as Auri Alfonso Hummes in Montenegro in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, was of German descent and grew up in an area in southern Brazil dominated by German immigrants. His ancestors emigrated from the Hunsrück to Brazil in 1857. Perhaps that is why it was so easy for him to help forge a progressive German-Brazilian axis.

He studied with the Jesuits, but entered the Franciscan order in 1952, where he received the religious name, Claudio. His intelligence enabled him to continue his studies at the Antonianum, the pontifical college of the Franciscan order in Rome. In 1958 he was ordained a priest and in 1965 he was an adviser to the Brazilian Bishops' Conference on ecumenical questions.

In 1975 he was appointed bishop by Paul VI. and the episcopal consecration by his confrere Archbishop Aloisio Lorscheider OFM, one of the signatories of the catacomb pact. In the same year, he became bishop of Santo André. At the time, Hummes had been in close contact with the political left for years, particularly with future Brazilian head of state and government Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

At the same time, however, he had the only partially accurate reputation of not being a representative of Marxist liberation theology, which was particularly rampant in Brazil. Therefore, John Paul II appointed him Lorscheider's successor as Archbishop of Fortaleza and in 1998 Archbishop of São Paulo, one of the largest dioceses in the world. He was created a cardinal in 2001.

The integration attempt by Benedict XVI.

Cardinal Scherer's message

Benedict XVI appointed Hummes to the Roman Curia as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy in 2006, an appointment that caused a scandal even before Hummes arrived in Rome. The newly appointed prefect of clergy spoke out in an interview in Brazil for the abolition of Priestly Celibacy.  The scandal was perfect. The Holy See, severely offended, intervened and Hummes backtracked. He corrected his statement and was able to take up his post as Prefect in Rome.

The Brazilian cardinal had revealed two things to the whole world: Hummes was not a Marxist, but a progressive with no reservations about the Marxists. And he knew how to act, if necessary to hide his feelings.

Nevertheless, his time in Rome was not to last long. Externally he kept a low profile but sabotaged the pontificate of Benedict XVI. The final straw came in 2010 with Hummes' boycott of the appointment of St. John Mary Vianney as Patron Saint of Priests.

Behind the scenes, the progressive spectrum was up in arms against Benedict XVI's intention to make the priest of Ars the role model for the next generation of priests. According to the outraged, this is a step backward into “pre-conciliar” times and is directed “against” the Second Vatican Council. Hummes as the responsible cardinal prefect at the Curia played a central role in the rebellion against Benedict XVI. Since this was intriguing and Benedict XVI. was a very lenient regent, Vianney's appointment failed. However, the German Pope showed in his reaction that he could – if only rarely – take decisive steps. He fired the Brazilian that same year and before the end of Hummes' term. Benedict XVI thus shared his poor opinion of Hummes' tenure to the world.

Cardinal Hummes returned to Brazil at the age of 76 and had become Benedict's implacable opponent on a personal level as well. At the beginning of 2014 he would have turned 80 and resigned as a papal elector. The end of his influence. But Benedict XVI. surprisingly announced his resignation in February 2013 and offered the progressive Fronde the unexpected opportunity to turn things around at the "last moment".

Hummes, the Pope Whisperer

Hummes became a key figure in the March 2013 conclave. He was the one who supported the archbishop of Buenos Aires in the pre-conclave and, according to his own statements, supported Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the conclave "when things became a little more dangerous".

The crucial concern of the Sankt Gallen secret group and the Bergoglio team was that their Argentine candidate could withdraw his candidacy, as he did in 2005. Cardinal Kasper had obtained Bergoglio's promise that this would not be the case a second time. But Hummes had the task not to leave Bergoglio's side in the Sistine Chapel. When he showed himself to the world as the new pope, the "pope maker" Hummes also stood next to him on the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica. It was he, as Francis later said several times, who had whispered to him to take the name Francis.

When Francis showed himself to the world as the newly elected Pope in 2013, Cardinal Hummes stood with him on the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica.

The close bond between Francis and Hummes was still evident in the election year when the new pope gave the Brazilian the satisfaction of vengeance. On September 21, 2013, Francis Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, with whom Benedict XVI. had replaced Hummes as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy just three years previously.

As late as February 2014, the first anniversary of Benedict XVI's announcement of his resignation, Hummes' joy was evident. The mood among Catholics had been "depressed and sad" during Benedict's reign around the world. People would have “hung their heads”. But with the resignation of the German Pope, so much has changed in one fell swoop “in such a quick and beautiful way”. With the election of Francis, the loss of trust of the people under Benedict XVI. vanished, because "now people have trust again".

In July 2014, in the changing climate of the new pontificate, Hummes gave the Brazilian newspaper Zero Hora a deeper insight into the intellectual world of a “popemaker”, in which “gay marriage”, the abolition of celibacy and women’s priesthood do not pose problems, but play an essential role.

Humme's most important project: the Amazon Synod

This explains why the revolutionary Austrian missionary Bishop Erwin Kräutler found in Hummes the decisive companion for the project "Amazon workshop" with the main goal of eliminating "forced celibacy". It was Hummes who opened the door to Santa Marta and the Amazon Synod. Hummes and Kräutler then also controlled the umbrella organization REPAM, which was founded especially for the synod: Kräutler as chairman for Brazil, Hummes as overall chairman.

It was Hummes who, before the Amazon Synod, alternately announced in cryptic tones that the synod “may become historic” and openly declared that the synod would “decide on married priests” . After all, the Amazon Synod "is not convened to repeat what the Church is already saying, but to move forward," Hummes said in the summer of 2018.

The major goal of the Brazilian purple wearer was the abolition of “forced celibacy”, as he had contemptuously called priestly celibacy back in 2010. Other solutions were out of the question for him. He vigorously rejected such a proposal in the late summer of 2016, when the proposal was made at a conference to solve the problem of the shortage of priests in the Amazon jungle by asking each missionary order to send two priests. Hummes had an allergic reaction: " No, no, the Pope doesn't want that ". He certainly didn't want it.

Everything was prepared by the Amazon Synod to overturn priestly celibacy. Hummes wrote a letter to all in January 2020 announcing Francis' post-synodal exhortation and urging it to be "accepted." It was generally expected that the letter would contain a softening of priestly celibacy. At a secret meeting in June 2019, the leaders of the synod had already found a name for the new ordained ministry: It should be “ Presbyter". Austria's bishops declared three months before the start of the synod – prematurely – that they would “ implement ” the resolutions for the Amazon in Austria. In Austria? It really didn't need more signals to grasp the deeper agenda of the Amazon Synod.

Hummes with Francis at the "Witches' Dance in the Vatican"

The Synod of “Indigenists, Modernists, Anti-Natalists and Ecologists” took place as planned. On the margins of the synod, Hummes celebrated a new edition of the catacomb synod of 1965, October 4, what became known as the “witches’ dance in the Vatican due to the scandalous introduction of the Pachamama which took place there.

But then everything turned out differently.

Benedict XVI published in early 2020, together with Cardinal Robert Sarah, then still Prefect of the Congregation for Worship, a plea for the priesthood and priestly celibacy. Outbursts of anger erupted in Santa Marta, but the surprise turnaround on celibacy was perfect. The subject was dropped at the last minute.

Hummes, Francis and Brazil's Socialists

Francis' conspicuous commitment to Lula da Silva also goes back to Hummes. The pope supported the “Free Lula” campaign when the former president was put in prison on suspicion of corruption, sent messages of solidarity to his prison cell, and was outraged by an alleged “white-glove coup d’état” when Lula’s socialists were about to lose their elections in 2018.

Monsignor Hummes with Socialist leader Lula da Silva (right) during strikes in 1979: the dream of reconciling socialism and Christianity

After the unexpected defeat on the celibacy issue, things had calmed down around Cardinal Hummes, at least on an international level. In Brazil he worked to the end on the project of a "Church with Amazonian roots". The post-synodal letter Querida Amazonia did not bring about the abolition of celibacy that he and the West hoped for, but it was a Bergoglian instrument that, given the “right” conditions and the necessary backing, offers a lot of leeway – also in the future. In the end, Hummes eagerly supported the establishment of the Conferencia Eclesial de la Amazonia as a parallel church structure. Katholisches.Info wrote on July 10, 2020 about the “ revolution through the back door” :

“The creation of completely new institutions opens the way to shedding the most 'obstructive' considerations possible and to being able to strive for the targeted goals more consistently and directly. (...) The new facility is a seamless continuation of the revolutionary agenda that some saw as shelved, or at least wanted to see. The new institution has been commissioned to submit "an important paper" to the Vatican on the question of how "married men in areas without priests" could be ordained. 

Since then it has been established that the objectives have not changed and continue to be: creation of a new Amazonian rite, abolition of celibacy, admission of married men to the priesthood, admission of women to the sacrament of Holy Orders as deaconesses – for the time being – and other progressive burdens of the past.”

 

Cardinal Hummes became chairman of the new parallel structure.

Hummes supported the unprecedented attack by 152 Brazilian bishops on President Jair Bolsonaro in the summer of 2020. The "Church with an Amazonian face" is too important to Santa Marta for such a frontal attack against a friendly, democratically elected legitimate government by parts of the episcopate to be launched single-handedly. Cardinal Hummes, Francis' personal friend, vouched for this.

May God have mercy on his soul.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image : MiL/arquisp.org.br/VaticanNews/Youtube/Wikicommons (Screenshots)

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

AMDG