Review: The St. Gallen Mafia – Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church by Julia Meloni.

I bought this book immediately after reading Father's review! I've started it and it looks to be fascinating, going into the very depths of the Sankt Gallen Mafia.

From Fr Z's Blog

I’m reading

THE ST. GALLEN MAFIA – Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church by Julia Meloni.

US HERE – UK HERE

It is published by TAN Books.

In a nutshell, a group of cardinals were meeting already in the 90’s with the purpose of undermining Joseph Card. Ratzinger and, later, Benedict XVI, while raising up a contrast Pope in the figure of Card. Martini and, later, Card. Bergoglio.

The group was active for awhile and then went dormant, to be revived at the time of the 2013 conclave that elected Bergoglio.

Meloni’s book connects a lot of data points, much as we do when we complete a jigsaw puzzle, looking for corners and straight edges, sorting for colors and filling in blanks.

She is quite thorough.

One section that caught my close attention was a later chapter on the patience of the machinations and the individuals, wherein there popped in an important name: Yves Congar, an powerful influence at the Second Vatican Council and part of the Concilium group.

Why does that name trigger me? Because when Francis opened the recent Synod (“walking together) about Synods (“walking together”) he quoted Congar, saying:

“We must not makeanotherChurch,we must make a different Church”(Vera e falsa riforma nella Chiesa,Milan 1994, 193). And that’s the challenge. For a “different Church”, open to the newness that God wants to suggest to her, let us invoke the Spirit with greater strength and frequency and humbly listen to him, walking together, as he, creator of communion and mission, desires, that is, with docility and courage.

As Meloni points out, Congar “was obsessed by time”.

Congar wanted a patient transformation of the Church without rushing, causing breaks or schisms, moving in stages, patiently waiting through delays.

For his part, Francis has several guiding principles that he laid out in Evangelii gaudium which he in turn took from an Argentinian caudillo.  One of those principles was “time is greater than space”.   It sounds vacuous, but it in essence means, “patience overcomes resistence”.

In this section, Meloni connects the influence of Card. Martini with the projects of Francis.  They line up.

I am reminded of the patience that certain groups such as Masons, Communists, and Homosexualists had over decades of slow but steady infiltration of the Church at many levels, keeping relatively quite until the “tipping point” was finally attained.  We are seeing the results now being played out before our horrified eyes.

I haven’t seen lib reactions to this book yet, but surely they will devolve into the usual sniffery about “conspiracy theorists”, as if that will automatically deny the veracity of the content.   The problem is that facts are stubborn.  Meloni provides citations.

This is a hard book to read, much as an autopsy is hard to watch.  They are simultaneously fascinating and repulsive.

UPDATE:

As far as lib reactions are concerned, I tried something.  At the beginning of the book, Meloni describes Card. Martini watching Card. Ratzinger preach the famous homily before the conclave, how for a moment Martini glared at Ratzinger.  She provided the link to the video with the time point.

The video is now “unavailable”.

At least at that link.

It might be a good idea for people to gather onto their own hard disks some of the online references for future consultation.

BTW… the obvious companion to Meloni’s book is The Dictator Pope (revised and updated) – (US HERE – UK HERE) – highly critical of Pope Francis and those around him, originally was published under the pen name of “Marcantonio Colonna”.