The St. Gallen Mafia

Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church

Julia Meloni

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781505122893
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Église chrétienne

In the mid-1990s, a clandestine group of high-ranking churchmen began gathering in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Opposed to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the circle plotted a revolution in stealth.

By 2015, their secret ached to be told. Before an audience, Cardinal Godfried Danneels joked of being a part of a "mafia." But as explosive as Danneels's confession was, a thick cloud of mystery still enshrouds the St. Gallen mafia.

In this compelling book, Julia Meloni pieces together the eerie trail of confessional evidence about the St. Gallen group. Copiously researched and grippingly narrated, The St. Gallen Mafia sheds light on the following:

• The mysteries of the 2005 conclave, where mafia members grew divided over a plan to back Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope.
• The war against Benedict XVI by the mafia's Cardinal Achille Silvestrini - and the mysterious "confessions" believed to be linked to him.
• The enigmatic, complicated relationship between the mafia's Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini and Benedict XVI.
• The mafia writings that presaged a new Francis - and the 2013 conclave that elected him.
• Martini's enduring role as an "ante-pope" - a "precursor" for Pope Francis.

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TIME

9

Dark Horse

“I can still remember walking in, and it looked absolutely magnificent in the Sistine Chapel,” he said. “The wonderful frescoes of Michelangelo. The Last Judgment on the altar.”¹

He was reminiscing about the 2005 conclave before the 2013 papal election. Over and over again in interviews, he told the story of how “somber” and “dramatic” it was to choose a pope beneath the gaze of Christ in The Last Judgment.²

Later, letting you in on the secret, he’d explain how every cardinal at a conclave keeps a papal name up his sleeve—just in case.³ Then the old cardinal—who had said, as a three-year-old, that he wanted to be a doctor or the pope—revealed his own names at the 2005 conclave: Adrian and Gregory.⁴

“And once I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought, what about Cormac the First!” he added.⁵

He was eminently likeable, with glasses and a laugh that made you feel comfortable. He was too old to vote in the 2013 papal election, but the work of a conclave—he liked to say—is done before the cardinals go in.⁶

He was the mafia’s Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, and he was the kingmaker.

* * *

On March 1, 2013, Murphy-O’Connor dined with Bergoglio, the conclave’s dark horse.⁷

“During the pre-conclave period, a steady stream of papal electors were seen visiting the cardinal in his Roman home, the Venerable English College,” The Tablet said of Murphy-O’Connor. “One of those was … Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who, it is understood, had supper with the English cardinal at La Pollarola restaurant.”⁸

There, over risotto and wine, Murphy-O’Connor and Bergoglio discussed “the sort of person [they] felt the cardinals should elect.”⁹

“We both agreed that [the Church] needed something different,” Murphy-O’Connor later recalled. “How’s the Church going to be led by Peter, and who’s he going to be?”¹⁰

According to Murphy-O’Connor’s memoir, he did not, at that dinner, “raise the issue” of Bergoglio being a candidate.¹¹ Yet Murphy-O’Connor did ultimately conclude from that meeting that Bergoglio “could be pope.”¹²

A day after that dinner—on March 2—the Italian papers quoted an anonymous cardinal as saying, “Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things.”¹³ Murphy-O’Connor would later repeat that exact slogan, adding, “But pray to God we have him for much longer than that.”¹⁴

“Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things.” Like an eerie chorus, it followed the dark horse’s candidacy everywhere.

“Just before” the pre-conclave meetings known as General Congregations began—that is, shortly before March 4—a “very interesting and influential Italian gentleman” approached his friend, then cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

“He could do it, you know,” the Italian said of Bergoglio.

“What could he do?” asked McCarrick.

“He could reform the Church. If we gave him five years, he could put us back on target.”

“He’s seventy-six.”

“Yeah, five years, if he had five years the Lord working through Bergoglio in five years could make the Church over again.”¹⁵

The Italian asked McCarrick to “talk up” Bergoglio. McCarrick went on, at the General Congregations, to speak of finding a candidate who would reach out to the poor and be connected to Latin America.¹⁶ According to a media representative for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Prior to the conclave Cardinal McCarrick … was touting the praises of [Bergoglio], whom he had met on his many travels.”¹⁷

Later, Austen Ivereigh—Murphy-O’Connor’s former press secretary—would speculate that the Italian was “more likely to be a cleric than not.”¹⁸ And “if it were a cleric,” Ivereigh thought, “it would likely be [Archbishop Loris] Capovilla”—the former personal secretary to Pope John XXIII.¹⁹

And later it would emerge that McCarrick—who would be laicized in 2019 for sexual abuse—had a mysterious connection to St. Gallen. According to a victim, McCarrick traveled there ”on a regular basis—on a yearly basis—probably for twenty years.”²⁰

Eerily, St. Gallen was emerging as a hidden center of gravity for the conclave. In 2005, mafia members at the conclave had sent back a postcard to another member saying, “We are here in the spirit of Sankt Gallen.”²¹ Now, that spirit rose up like an invisible hand guiding the selection of the next pope.

* * *

“Nobody thought of him,” Murphy-O’Connor said of Bergoglio, with regard to the 2013 papal election. “And then, suddenly, a number of cardinals started rooting for him.”²²

“At the conclave,” Murphy-O’Connor continued, “you have the official meetings of all the cardinals. But then outside, you meet secretly with the cardinals, at dinners, behind closed doors, and discuss the candidates. So by the time you actually go into conclave, there’s already a number of votes for a particular person.”²³

By March 5, Murphy-O’Connor was promoting Bergoglio at a dinner at the Pontifical North American College’s Red Room. The name “didn’t catch fire that night,” says Ivereigh, noting that one American cardinal “was worried about Bergoglio’s age.”²⁴

By March 7, Murphy-O’Connor was co-hosting a private gathering of cardinals with the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the Holy See. “More than one of [the cardinals] brought up Bergoglio’s name,” says vaticanista Gerard O’Connell.²⁵

By March 10, Bergoglio was telling a Canadian priest, “Pray for me.” Asked if he was nervous, Bergoglio replied, “A little bit … I don’t know what my fellow cardinals are cooking up for me.”²⁶

By the end of the General Congregations, Murphy-O’Connor was making a final push for Bergoglio. As he put it, “I remember saying … Because by this time I had my eye on Bergoglio. And I said, ‘Age doesn’t matter now, because Pope Benedict has given us an example. And so if the new pope is elderly and he can’t carry on because of health, why then he’ll be able to resign.’ … And I said, ‘We might look in another continent.’”²⁷

According to O’Connell, Murphy-O’Connor spoke specifically of crossing to the Americas—and “many understood he was referring to Bergoglio.”²⁸

Later that day, the conclave’s eve, Murphy-O’Connor made his way to the Vatican apartment of an Italian cardinal. There, a meeting of fifteen or more Bergoglio supporters, including Kasper, took place. As each cardinal affirmed his support and named other likely backers, Martini’s former private secretary kept a tally. He counted at least twenty-five votes for Bergoglio.²⁹

On March 12, a storm gripped Rome. Hail rained down. As the cardinals dispersed following the Mass before the conclave, Murphy-O’Connor fell into step beside Bergoglio.

“Watch out, now it’s your turn,” Murphy-O’Connor said.³⁰

“I understand,” Bergoglio replied.

He was calm, said Murphy-O’Connor, and “was aware that he was probably going to be a candidate going in.”³¹

* * *

“It is generally thought,” says historian Henry Sire, “that Pope Benedict’s purpose in abdicating was to bring about the succession of Cardinal [Angelo] Scola.” But according to Sire, Benedict’s plan “failed from the start.”³²

As one cardinal puts it, Benedict ingenuously believed Scola would be elected. But Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, whom Benedict had long trusted, helped thwart Scola’s candidacy.³³

On the conclave’s first ballot, according to a leaked diary, Scola received thirty votes. But Bergoglio received almost as many: twenty-six, one more than the revolutionaries had calculated. The other votes were scattered among numerous contenders.³⁴

Then the ballots were burned—sending black smoke, the sign of no pope, into the Roman evening.

By the next morning—March 13—Bergoglio had seized the lead. On the second ballot, he earned forty-five votes, against Scola’s thirty-eight. On the third ballot, he earned fifty-six, against Scola’s forty-one.³⁵

Black smoke billowed out again.

Outside the conclave, some caught wind of the campaign to elect Bergoglio. CNN’s Christopher Cuomo revealed on air that he had been “offered up” the name of Bergoglio as “the perfect compromise candidate.”

“As we’re thinking about if the big names don’t deliver early on and they have to look for an alternative, [an] interesting sugge...