Pentecost Message To Pope Benedict: Clean Up The Mess You Call The Vatican

Paolo Gabriele was really close to the Pope.  Perhaps the Holy Spirit is sending Benedict a message.  Kind of like the Archangel Gabriel is used by the Holy Spirit to give some pretty important messages.

Like everyone else I've been following the 'butler did it' story coming from the Vatican.  And I, like a lot of other people, have a hard time understanding why the butler would do it, especially on his own initiative.  After giving it some thought, and reading dozens of articles, I can see where the butler, Paolo Gabriele, could have done it for at least three reasons.

The first one is he is a true whistle blower.  He was hired during JPII's reign by the at the time papal secretary and now Cardinal of Krakow, Msgr Dziwisz.  Dziwisz has been implicated by reporter Jason Berry as one of Maciel's financial beneficiaries as JPII"s gatekeeper.  It could be that Gabriele was truly fed up with the corruption surrounding access to the Pope which under JPII was the ultimate 'pay for pray' scheme.  Hence we get the leaked stories about the EU100,000 truffle donated by some rich Italian and the 10,000 donation from the Italian journalist for an interview with Benedict.  These kinds of stories would be directly in Gabriele's purview, but it doesn't explain anything else.


The second and better possibility is that Gabriele is in league with others further up the chain to discredit the cronyism surrounding Cardinal Bertone, the corruption in the Vatican bank, and the utter countersign to Jesus Christ represented by the whole operation.  In this scenario the butler gets to add his beefs--the pay for papal access--and becomes a central depository for other leakers who have other fish to fry.  Big fish.  The butler agrees to this because he is so close to the Pope he would be above suspicion.  By default he becomes the designated fall guy for the rest of his fellow leakers.  He is the Sancho Panza for other Don Quijotes.


The third possibility is the Gabriele story is a false flag operation and he is falling on his sword for the Papacy itself, and his family will be very well taken care of while he undergoes his martyrdom and the Vatican tries to recover from the fallout.

My money is on scenario number two. My mind keeps returning to Archbishop Vigano and his leaked letters which warned Benedict of the dismay his transfer to the US as Papal Envoy would engender in others who were trying to clean up the corruption in the Vatican.  My mind turns to Cardinal Bertone whose tenure as Secretary of State has been one embarrassing fiasco after another, and one power grab after another.  My mind turns to the Vatican Bank and how suddenly Carl Anderson has become it's spokesman as if Carl Anderson some how has more credibility than anyone else.  Then there is the fact Carl Anderson does represent the KofC which is a very big player in the life insurance business which allows Carl and his boys to donate millions to the pet causes of various Cardinals and Archbishops. For these men Carl would have a great deal of credibility.  Millions of dollars of credibility.

And finally, my mind turns to Benedict who is too old to deal with all of this and has to feel utterly betrayed by the removal of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi as Director of the Vatican Bank.  Gotti is a friend, who answered directly to Benedict and who also had a large part in the writing of Caritas en Veritate.  Twenty four hours after this news he gets the second blow that his private butler has been arrested as the man behind Vatileaks.  I'm sure Benedict will be getting some more personal blows, but that's what happens when a person turns their back on governing in favor of continuous writing to shore up his legacy as a teaching pope.  Unfortunately, his predecessor, with his help, made sure the Papacy returned to being a monarchy with all power for all facets of the Church vested in the Pope.  Perhaps this has turned out to be to big a vision for the talents of one man--for any man.  Perhaps this is why Vatican II had a different governing vision.

Poor Benedict has a mess on his hands and no matter how many times he sermonizes on the 'rock weathering storms',  storms do eventually wear down, create cracks, and break apart rocks.  Thank God the Church is the People of God, not the Vatican curia and City State.  For the sake of any credible future for the Roman Catholic Church, this distinction can not be made enough.  Catholics need to start distancing themselves from the mess called the Vatican.  It is not the Church no matter how much it's done recently to convince us these two separate truths are actually just one.  Perhaps this is the message the Holy Spirit is trying to send one very old pope and one very old and corrupt Vatican.