ROME — Australian Cardinal George Pell continues to plague Pope Francis from beyond the grave as a veteran Vatican journalist revealed this week that the late cardinal was the author of a scathing rebuke to Francis released last March.
Commentators of every school agree that “this pontificate is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe,” states the memo circulated among the cardinals last spring.
“The Holy Father has little support among seminarians and young priests and wide-spread disaffection exists in the Vatican Curia,” declares the text, which has now been confirmed as the work of Cardinal Pell, as Breitbart News proposed last March.
The cardinal, whom the Wall Street Journal called “the most influential Catholic churchman in the English-speaking world,” passed away in Rome earlier this week and his funeral will be celebrated on Saturday.
The body of Cardinal George Pell placed for veneration by the faithful in the church of St Stephen of the Abyssinians in the Vatican. (source: Breitbart News)
Among the myriad aspects of the Francis pontificate criticized by Pell are widespread doctrinal confusion, silence in the face of open heresy from leftist prelates, active persecution of traditional Catholics, a diluted monotheism, the demolition of Saint John Paul’s legacy including the institute on marriage and the family bearing his name, rampant autocracy, phone tapping, the unjust ouster of Vatican auditor Libero Milone, flip-flopping on financial reforms, disrespect for the rule of law, and a general downgrading of the papacy on the world stage.
Regarding this final point, Pell noted that the “political influence of Pope Francis and the Vatican is negligible” and Francis’ writings demonstrate a significant intellectual decline from the standard of St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict.
Pell also observed “grave failures” on the part of the pope “to support human rights in Venezuela, Hong Kong, mainland China, and now in the Russian invasion.”
Moreover, he added, there has been “no public support for the loyal Catholics in China who have been intermittently persecuted for their loyally to the Papacy for more than 70 years.”
Chinese Catholic worshippers kneel and pray during Palm Sunday Mass during the Easter Holy Week at an “underground” or “unofficial” church on April 9, 2017, near Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China. China, an officially atheist country, places a number of restrictions on Christians, allowing legal practice of the faith only at state-approved churches. The policy has driven an increasing number of Christians and Christian converts ‘underground’ to secret congregations in private homes and other venues.
Cardinal Pell devoted the second half of his memo to outlining key priorities when choosing Francis’s successor at the next papal conclave.
“The first tasks of the new pope will be to restore normality, restore doctrinal clarity in faith and morals, restore a proper respect for the law and ensure that the first criterion for the nomination of bishops is acceptance of the apostolic tradition,” the cardinal asserted.
The successor of Peter “has a foundational role for unity and doctrine,” Pell wrote. “The new pope must understand that the secret of Christian and Catholic vitality comes from fidelity to the teachings of Christ and Catholic practices. It does not come from adapting to the world or from money.”
As he has done elsewhere, Pell also sharply criticized the ongoing “synodal path” initiated by Francis, which, if left on its present course “will consume much time and money, probably distracting energy from evangelization and service rather than deepening these essential activities.”
National or continental synods also pose “a new danger to world-wide Church unity,” whereby local churches could hold doctrinal views not compatible with the apostolic tradition, he suggested.
In his memo, the cardinal also proposed an apostolic “visitation” of the pope’s own Jesuit order, which is in a situation of “catastrophic numerical decline” often accompanied by “catastrophic moral decline.”