Andrea Cionci: The White Box
How the white box given to Bergoglio by Benedict xvi has condemned the anti-pope
The Italian journalist Andrea Cionci has requested that I publish the following article. The translation is his.
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On March 23, 2013, an event took place that has remained incomprehensible to this day.
Pope Benedict XVI, already emeritus, i.e., already impeded for more than three weeks, received the antipope Francis at Castel Gandolfo and, for the benefit of the cameras, publicly handed him a large white box containing the records of the Herranz Commission's investigation.
That commission, composed of Cardinals Herranz, Tomko and De Giorgi had been put together in July 2012 by Pope Benedict to investigate the leak that went down in history as Vatileaks.
The pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele, had taken away documents from the pontiff's desk in early 2012, passed them to journalists, and then was arrested by the Vatican Gendarmerie in May 2012.
Poor Gabriele was called a “raven” by journalists, but Pope Benedict, in 2016, in his book “Last Conversations,” ingeniously seized on that crude metaphor of cronachistic language to make us understand the true role of Paolo Gabriele.
He made a comparison, in fact, between what happened with Mr. Gabriele and the hagiographic episode of St. Benedict and the Raven: an enemy priest of the saint wanted to poison him and sent him poisoned bread.
The patron saint of Europe then ordered that friendly crow, who came every day to peck at the crumbs on his table, to take that bread in his beak and throw it into a cliff. The crow was thus a friend of the saint, just as Mr. Gabriele was a friend of Pope Benedict and performed a valuable task for him. With his heroic gesture, he got the public through journalists the searing contents of those documents: four letters from prelates complaining about the excessive power of Card. Bertone and the so-called Mordkomplott according to which Pope Benedict would be dead by November 2012 (Exactly when Americans would elect President Obama).
By having himself arrested “like a chicken,” with all the photocopied documents in plain sight, Mr. Gabriele allowed the judiciary to get hold of those papers.
Not surprisingly, Paolo Gabriele's father, Andrea, wrote a bold public letter to TgCom in July 2013: “I definitely want to emphasize Paolo's absolute honesty, his great generosity and moral integrity, which come to him from his morigerate family of origin, his deep love for the Church of Christ, for his Pontiff Benedict XVI, as well as for Blessed John Paul II, who knew his heart well.”
Dutifully, Pope Benedict ordered an inquiry into Vatileaks that month, entrusting it to the three cardinals headed by Herranz. On Dec. 17, 2012, curiously on Bergoglio's birthday, the Herranz commission delivered the final report to the pope, and on Feb. 25, 2013, Benedict XVI summoned the three cardinals to dismiss them. Card. Herranz wrote in his book “Two Popes” (Piemme, 2023).
“The "Osservatore Romano” thus communicated on its front page the news of our meeting with the Pope: the Holy Father received this morning in audience Cardinals Julián Herranz, Jozef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi of the Commission of Inquiry of the Cardinals on the Leaking of Confidential Information, accompanied by their secretary, Capuchin Father Luigi Martignani. Today, Monday, Feb. 25, a statement from the Holy See Press Office gave the following news: “At the conclusion of the assignment, His Holiness wished to thank them for the fruitful work accomplished, expressing his satisfaction with the results of the investigation. This survey has made it possible to prove, along with the limitations and imperfections proper to the human component of every institution, the generosity, rectitude and dedication of those who work in the Holy See at the service of the mission entrusted by Christ to the Roman Pontiff."”
The statement is brilliantly written in an amphibological manner: at first one would be inclined to think that by “the limitations and imperfections” of the human institution Benedict was referring to Mr. Paolo Gabriele, while also defending the Curia characterized by “rectitude and dedication.” Indeed, even Herranz writes about those lines that “some interpreted it as a kind of ex officio defense of the Curia.”
But this attribution is not specified at all, so much so that it is quite permissible to interpret it the other way around, with the limitations and imperfections ... of the Curia, (i.e. conspiratorial cardinals) supplanted by the rectitude and dedication ... of Mr.Paolo Gabriele.
It is no coincidence that on Dec. 22, 2012, five days after receiving the commission's report, Pope Benedict pardoned Mr. Paolo Gabriele, returning him a job: it had been ascertained that he was innocent and that, he had helped the Pontiff, in enormous difficulty.
Card. Herranz: “The official release (dated Feb. 25, 2013 ed.) concluded with a strong statement: ‘The Holy Father has decided that the acts of the investigation, the contents of which only His Holiness knows, remain at the disposal exclusively of the new pontiff.’ This sentence, which seemed superfluous to some, was very useful later to us members of the Commission in the midst of the tensions related to the future conclave.”
In fact, the author explains that, during the pre-conclave, “some cardinals, without explicitly invoking it, but alluding in some way to the ‘conciliar’ doctrine of the Council of Constance, had privately pressured the presidency of the General Congregations to communicate to the College of Cardinals - the highest authority during the period of the vacant see - the main news and conclusions of the so called Vatileaks, since the cardinal electors had to know them before entering the conclave, since that had been a pontifical Commission of Inquiry into the Roman Curia. Cardinals Sodano and Bertone called me to communicate this insistent request, somewhat concerned about the atmosphere that was being created inside and outside our meetings.”
The three “cardinal-detectives” find themselves somewhat embarrassed because Benedict had placed the results of the investigation under secrecy, saying that the “new pontiff” would take care of it. So, they come together to provide an ingenious response inspired by Benedict's amphibological official statement: “It is our duty to think that here we are not dealing with the honorability of persons who could be elected by this College to the succession of Benedict XVI to the Chair of Peter.”
Since that college would not elect a true successor to Benedict XVI, the three cardinals speak the truth and defend the papal secret to which they had been bound.
The abusive conclave proceeds, therefore, and elects the antipope Bergoglio.
At this point, another bureaucratic-legal step becomes necessary for Pope Benedict: the notification of the acts of the Herranz Commission is necessary and preliminary to any consideration regarding complicity and even the right of defense.
Benedict who is impeded at that time, has promised obedience and reverence to the impeder, even before his election, in his leave of the cardinals on Feb. 28, and meekly hands over to him what is in his possession, namely those burning documents.
He does so publicly, blatantly, with a voluminous box resting on the coffee table in the Castel Gandolfo living room.
The Pope, the Vicar of Christ, always speaks the truth and offers Bergoglio a chance for redemption.
In fact, with his Declaratio of Feb. 11, 2013, which was nothing more than a decisio,
a penal decree by which the pope ascertained and judged his impeded see, Benedict announced the upcoming usurpation, but he could not know 100 percent who would be elected. If anything, Bergoglio could have been elected antipope even unknowingly. With the handing over of the white box, the docile Benedict offers him the truth and at the same time tremendously confronts him with his responsibilities.
Everything is in the box: his impediment, the death plot, Bertone's overweening power, and who knows what else. Bergoglio thus has two options:
1) open the box, read the contents, wince and immediately intervene in the pope's defense, declaring the fake conclave null and void and freeing the impeded pontiff.
2) leave the box closed, dispose of it, or ignore its disruptive contents after reading it.
Bergoglio chose very poorly: since Benedict was never rescued or freed from the impeded See, he certainly either did not open the box or ignored it, which definitively sanctions his guilt. He was elected antipope on March 13, 2013, and as of March 23, we know for sure that he knowingly accepted that abusive office.
And now it is hoped that the Vatican judiciary will see to it, including by immediately placing Cardinals Herranz and De Giorgi under protection (Tomko passed away in 2022) who evidently know everything.
Is it just a case that Card. De Giorgi, on June 29, 2024, on the day of Sts. Peter and Paul, 13 days after the delivery of the writer's petition to the Vatican Tribunal, had been the victim of a terrible car accident, fortunately coming out “miraculously” unharmed?
Let justice be done, and soon.