As Socci asked before the interview was taken down for the second time: “What is going on at the Vatican?” What indeed? I await Socci’s and other commentators’ reaction to the second removal, as well as the Vatican’s “clarification” of how this could have happened.
Speaking of the burning question of what is going on at the Vatican, it has been brought to my attention that Francis’s declaration of a Jubilee Year dedicated to Pope Celestine, who abdicated the papal throne on account of his own incompetence, duplicates Pope Benedict’s own declaration of a Celestine Year in 2009. In a speech announcing that declaration, then Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone noted that during a visit to Celestine’s tomb in that year, Benedict had laid his pallium, the symbol of his authority, on the tomb—a clear indication of his own approaching abdication (as Socci noted in his accurate prediction that Benedict would resign the papacy in his eighty-fifth year).
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Two Celestine years since 2009? Two entire years devoted to a Pope who resigned the papacy in disgrace after a few calamitous months in office? Was Francis even aware of Benedict’s declaration of a Celestine Year? If so, why would he declare another Celestine Year? If not, then how could Pope Bergoglio have so little knowledge of the acts of his own immediate predecessor regarding the very same subject matter?
The mystery and confusion surrounding this papacy deepens with each passing day. We have never been to this place before, and who knows where we are headed next.