The Letter of the Thirteen Cardinals. a Key Backstory

By Sandro Magister
The Chiesa
October 15, 2015

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351158?eng=y

ROME, October 15, 2015 – Since the letter of the thirteen cardinals to the pope became public knowledge, the Vatican authorities, through Fr. Federico Lombardi, have not passed up an opportunity to censure its publication and, more or less indirectly, its contents and authors.

The latest instance came yesterday, in the daily press conference accompanying the work of the synod, when the director of the Vatican press office took aim for the umpteenth time at “the fateful letter that has received much more attention than it deserves.”

But in that case it is right that the backstory of the publication of the letter from the thirteen cardinals should also be made known. A backstory that is absolutely not to be ignored, after which it became obligatory – for the sake of accurate information – to verify the real state of affairs, the contents of the letter and who had signed it.

The following post says it all.

It came out yesterday only in Italian on the blog “Settimo cielo.” And it appears again here translated into English, French, and Spanish. So that everybody gets it.

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The “plot of the thirteen.” Here’s who told about it first

In reproving yet again today, October 14, “the fateful letter that has received much more attention than it deserves,” Fr. Federico Lombardi – together with a substantial army of journalists and prelates – seems to have forgotten that the first to squawk over the news of that confidential act was not a presumed emissary of the signers but the vaticanista who is friendliest with and closest of all to Pope Francis, his frequent guest at Santa Marta and his interviewer many times over: Andrea Tornielli, coordinator of the portal “Vatican Insider.”

Tornielli in fact broke the news of the step taken toward the pope back on October 8, four days before their letter became known, with a very well-informed article that appeared jointly on “Vatican Insider” (although it was quickly removed from the home page) and in the newspaper “La Stampa,” on page 9.

In “La Stampa” the article was given the heading “Behind the scenes” and was entitled: “Synod steered, the accusation of 13 prelates. The pope replies: enough with the conspiracy theories.”

And in the body of the article not only was it asserted repeatedly, with absolute certainty, that the authors of the revolt were thirteen – not one more, not one fewer – but it was also specified that among them was Cardinal George Pell, called “the staunchest.”

The article did not explicitly mention a letter. But it said that “the thirteen synod fathers appealed to the pope” on the first day of the work, Monday October 5. And it went on at length – with evident mastery of the matter – to present some of the arguments that would in fact be found in the letter once it was published.

Tornielli, however, presented the arguments in such a way as to show the thirteen in a bad light, identifying them right from the beginning of the article as a “lobby” inside the synod applying “pressure” motivated by “conspiracy theories,” inducing one to “understand that the synod was ‘steered’ by the general secretariat and in the final analysis by the pope in order to nudge it toward openness.”

The article continued and concluded with ample citations of the “response” given in the assembly the following morning, Tuesday October 6, by the secretary general of the synod and by Pope Francis to the authors of the appeal, turning against them – no longer with the authority of the journalist but with that of the pontiff himself – the accusation of “conspiracy.”