It will be almost impossible for Zuppi, in the conclave, to reach the quorum of votes necessary to obtain the Throne of St. Peter. Even the most Bergoglian cardinals will see him as an uncomfortable ‘revolutionary of acceleration.’ After twelve years of Francis, the Revolution in the Church will have to take a step back, in the intentions of the neo-modernists, put the foot on the brake, and implement new phases of the Overton process of ‘insensitivity’ to evil and its normalization.
Unofficial Diplomat of the Holy See
At the end of April 2022, Pope Francis had already revealed the existence of peace talks organized by the Vatican between Ukraine and Russia: “There is a mission underway now, but it is not yet public. When it becomes public, I will talk about it.” Strangely, Russian and Ukrainian officials immediately dismissed Francis’s words as false. Both parties denied the existence and even the knowledge of such talks. Why did Francis make those statements? Did someone give him inaccurate information? Or was he referring to negotiations that did not directly involve the interested parties?
On May 20, 2022, Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican Press Office (also a long-time member of the Community of Sant’Egidio), announced that Pope Francis had entrusted Zuppi with the task of leading a mission, in agreement with the Secretariat of State, to help ease tensions in the conflict in Ukraine. The details remained secret. The pope’s decision puzzled many commentators and observers of Vatican affairs worldwide, as diplomacy—especially delicate diplomacy—has always been the domain of the Secretariat of State. For many, it was inevitable to interpret what happened as a sign of a ‘fall from grace’ for Parolin as the pope’s favorite, particularly following the various financial scandals, ongoing since 2020, involving the Secretariat of State and specifically Cardinal Angelo Becciu (accused of fraud, embezzlement, abuse of office, misappropriation, money laundering, self-laundering, corruption, extortion, publication of confidential documents, forgery of public documents, forgery of private writing, criminal association, and many other charges).
As Riccardo Cascioli, director of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, later commented, “the most important result of Zuppi’s mission to Moscow, which took place on June 28 and 29 [2023], is probably the fact that it took place.” However, after four stops in Kyiv, Moscow, Washington DC, and Beijing, Zuppi’s mission did not achieve any significant results, despite the high expectations of those who already foresaw a ‘diplomatic success’ for Francis similar to that of John XXIII during the Cuban Missile Crisis or John Paul II during the collapse of the Soviet Union. A very meager result, certainly, but ultimately understandable, given the extreme geopolitical delicacy and instability. Perhaps this should have prompted Bergoglio and his associates to reflect on the serious loss of authority that the Holy See and, in particular, the figure of the Pope have suffered on the international stage over the past seventy years and, very rapidly, over the past twelve years.
In December 2023, two major Italian media outlets (Panorama and La Verità) accused Zuppi of having financed, with two million euros through the Italian Episcopal Conference, a non-governmental organization dedicated to illegal immigration.
Luca Casarini Scandal
Luca Casarini is a well-known leader of the Italian no-global movement and the current head of mission for Mediterranea ‘Saving Humans,’ a non-governmental organization dedicated to rescuing migrants who shipwreck daily in the Mediterranean Sea during their crossings from Africa to reach the Old Continent (old in every sense now).
In April 2020, Francis sent him a very affectionate letter: ‘Luca, dear brother, thank you for the human compassion you show in the face of so much suffering. Thank you for your testimony, which does me so much good.’ There was also an important emphasis: ‘I am always available to lend a hand,’ and, addressing all the volunteers of the NGO, he added: ‘You can count on me.’ As we will see, Francis’s support was indeed much more than mere moral support. In 2023, Casarini was invited as a special guest (non-voting) to the Synod on Synodality, not being a bishop or consecrated, and representing a humanitarian organization. The Synod on Synodality was initiated and organized by Bergoglio to rethink the way of ‘being and doing Church,’ as they say. What theological and ecclesiological expertise Casarini might have to intervene on par with bishops, theologians, and cardinals in a project that aims to reform (read: revolutionize) the structure, nature, and mission of the Church is unknown.
In December 2023, however, two major Italian media outlets (Panorama and La Verità) accused Zuppi, in a lengthy report, of having financed, with two million euros through the Italian Episcopal Conference, a non-governmental organization dedicated to illegal immigration. Curiously, it was precisely the organization chaired by Luca Casarini. The media accusation implicated not only Zuppi but also the Pope himself, as the prelate would never have favored such funding without Francis’s explicit consent. Since then, Zuppi’s star seems to have gradually faded.
The Community of Sant’Egidio and the USAID Scandal
Sant’Egidio has often been described as the most influential Catholic lobby internationally. Imagine within the Church itself. Just consider that from 2011 to 2013, the founder Andrea Riccardi was the Italian Minister for International Cooperation and Integration during the technical government of Mario Monti, a government imposed by the European Union and not democratically elected, to adopt ‘austerity measures and structural reforms to avoid economic collapse.’ After the election of Francis, the Community gained more power within the Vatican. Besides Zuppi and Riccardi, another prominent figure is the aforementioned Anglo-Italian journalist Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican Press Office since 2019.
On July 15, 2019, during the first Trump Presidency, Sant’Egidio and USAID (a well-known American government agency officially responsible for providing economic assistance, international development, and humanitarian aid worldwide) signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The aim was to lay the groundwork for coordinating various activities in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. The Community of Sant’Egidio has been recurrently funded by USAID for various objectives, more or less known, both before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Francis and Cardinal Zuppi overcome the resistance of traditionalist Catholics: A special moment of spirituality has been included in the official calendar of the Holy Year on September 6, and the historic baroque church of the Gesù has become a promoter of welcoming LGBT+ pilgrims, their parents, workers, and all those who gravitate around these rainbow associations.
In September 2023, it became known that Germany financed a series of so-called non-governmental organizations engaged in completing the journey of thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa to Europe. One of these financings involved a project by Sant’Egidio. President Marco Impagliazzo stated that all the immigrants involved (thousands) were ‘regular asylum seekers,’ but many commentators pointed out inconsistencies between what was declared and what actually happened.
In the very early months of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, it emerged that USAID’s financial support was not ‘ideologically neutral,’ but aimed at promoting certain political agendas. This orientation intensified after May 3, 2021, when the Biden-Harris administration appointed Samantha Power, a well-known American journalist and Harvard professor, and former member of the Obama administration, as head of USAID. Her appointment was applauded by the world’s largest pro-abortion industries. Unsurprisingly, from then on, USAID collaborated even more actively with George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which has always been active in promoting LGBT and pro-abortion ideology.
In the Guidelines for the interim national security strategy published in March 2021 by President Biden (now removed from the White House website, but they were available at this link), it read: ‘We will promote gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and the advancement of women’s social status as part of our broader commitment to inclusive economic development and social cohesion. Global development is one of our best tools to formulate and embody our values while pursuing our national security interests. In short, our foreign development assistance and partnerships are both the right and smart thing to do.”
It was thus discovered that USAID did not fund NGOs for mere philanthropic reasons. The funded organizations all responded to a specific ideological purpose. As more than one commentator has written, it was a real ‘ideological warfare.’ Even in Europe, under the Democratic Biden-Harris presidency, USAID funded hundreds, if not thousands, of NGOs and ‘aligned’ media outlets to carry out massive political campaigns with a woke, socialist, globalist, and progressive orientation. As if that were not enough, the U.S. agency has also been criticized for funding operations aimed at destabilizing foreign governments, often in coordination with other U.S. agencies such as the CIA and the NED (National Endowment for Democracy). The agency also funded projects related to EcoHealth Alliance, involved in research at the Wuhan laboratory, and provided food to fighters affiliated with al-Qaeda in Syria.
To what extent is it correct to define an organization like the Community of Sant’Egidio as ‘non-governmental’ when it periodically but constantly receives funding from a government agency that has political and ideological purposes disguised as philanthropic motivations? But above all, how independent would the Catholic Church remain if one of the most important exponents of this Community—very active in importing into Catholicism the same doctrines exported by USAID around the world—were to become pope? And further, how independent is the Italian Episcopal Conference today, with this person already at its head? All questions that, for us Catholics, are more than legitimate and deserve an answer.
The event was then removed from the official Jubilee calendar following heated controversies, without any notification. Here you can find the archived version of the page, now removed from the official Jubilee website.
The Jubilee 2025 and the LGBT ‘Pilgrimage’: a great chaos
To stay on the topic of woke doctrines exported from the most revolutionary soul of the United States of America, on the occasion of the Jubilee 2025, Pope Francis approved a specific pilgrimage for the LGBT community, scheduled for September 2025. As Franca Giansoldati, a Vaticanist for the well-known Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, wrote: “Francis and Cardinal Zuppi overcome the resistance of traditionalist Catholics”; and again: “A special moment of spirituality has been included in the official calendar of the Holy Year on September 6, and the historic baroque church of the Gesù has become a promoter of welcoming LGBT+ pilgrims, their parents, workers, and all those who gravitate around these rainbow associations.”
It is striking that the Roman church chosen for this event is precisely the Church of the Gesù, which is the mother church of the Jesuits. As Michael Haynes explained in LifeSiteNews: “Its use by the LGBT pilgrimage is due to the fact that the event itself was born from an idea of a Jesuit priest from Bologna, Father Pino Piva, who brought the idea to the Pope.” In fact, it was from Bologna that the most important sponsorship and support for the event came, namely from the archbishop, cardinal, and CEI president Matteo Maria Zuppi, as well as from Father Arturo Sosa SJ, the general of the Jesuits.
The event was then removed from the official Jubilee calendar following heated controversies, without any notification. Here you can find the archived version of the page, now removed from the official Jubilee website. Towards the end of December 2024, the event was then reinserted into the calendar, once again without any notification, evidently in the hope of not raising further media uproar. On December 12, in fact, a Vatican official calmly stated that the pilgrimage had been removed from the calendar due to “insufficient details,” but that it would be reinserted shortly.
Who is hiding behind the decoy name of Zuppi? Does the powerful Community of Sant’Egidio have a name ready to pull out at the Conclave when the ‘decoy’ falls? The answer might have to do with the more discreet Portuguese cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça.
Is the Community of Sant’Egidio pushing for another name?
From this report, it becomes quite evident that the name of Matteo Maria Zuppi, publicly exposed as ‘papabile’ and a potential successor to Francis, might actually be just a decoy, an unfeasible candidate, terribly entangled with non-transparent and politicized lobbies, an ecclesiastic with a fluid and chameleon-like doctrine. It will be almost impossible for Zuppi, in the conclave, to reach the quorum of votes necessary to obtain the Throne of St. Peter. Even the most Bergoglian cardinals will see him as an uncomfortable ‘revolutionary of acceleration.’ After twelve years of Francis, the Revolution in the Church will have to take a step back, in the intentions of the neo-modernists, put the foot on the brake, and implement new phases of the Overton process of ‘insensitivity’ to evil and its normalization.
To summarize, we have recently witnessed the continuous change of Bergoglio’s great protégés:
- The star of Pietro Parolin, favored from the beginning, began to fade as early as May 2022, following the George Pell scandal and other unclear investments that saw the Secretariat of State at the center of controversy.
- The star of Luis Tagle, on the other hand, lost its luster starting in November 2022, following the Caritas Internationalis
- Matteo Zuppi seemed to emerge as the new favorite, but lost favor in December 2023 due to the scandal of financing Mediterranea ‘Saving Humans.’
- Pietro Parolin then re-emerged, this time with a more conciliatory strategy with the opposing anti-Bergoglian camp: on one hand, he harshly criticized the German synodal path; on the other hand, he went to Dubai instead of the pope for COP29: a true international showcase.
Who is hiding behind the decoy name of Zuppi? Does the powerful Community of Sant’Egidio have a name ready to pull out at the Conclave when the ‘decoy’ falls? The answer might have to do with the more discreet Portuguese cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça.
Tolentino, the current Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education (since 2022), is known for his ‘profound spirituality’ and his commitment to interreligious dialogue. His figure, although less known compared to other cardinals, represents a valuable option for the Community of Sant’Egidio, which has always promoted a peace and solidarity among peoples that is worldly, immanent, horizontal, and politicized. The choice of Tolentino could be seen as a strategic move to strengthen the influence of the Community of Sant’Egidio within the Catholic Church. His discretion and international profile make him an ideal candidate to carry forward the values and missions of the Community (and those who finance it, as we have seen) more incisively within the Church’s governance. Furthermore, his academic experience and public image as a ‘Catholic intellectual’ position him as a figure of great authority and respect.
As I wrote in another article for The Remnant, “the cardinal electors who desire a very long and continuous papacy, certainly heterodox and modernist, with an even greater revolutionary impulse than Francis, might find in Tolentino de Mendonça the ideal candidate. In the conclave, it is likely that he will gather votes among his Portuguese and Brazilian confreres, among whom he is said to have great influence. There would be much to pray for in the event of his election.”
