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unidentified
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The Lord is the Son of God, and the | |
Holy Spirit is the Son of God. | ||
The Lord is the Son of God, and the | ||
Holy Spirit is the Son of God. | ||
The Holy Spirit is the Son of God, and | ||
the Holy Spirit is the Son of God. | ||
The Holy Spirit is the Son of God, and | ||
the Holy Spirit is the Son of God. | ||
The Holy Spirit is the Son of God, and | ||
the Holy Spirit is the Son of God. | ||
The Holy Spirit is the Son of God, and | ||
the Holy Spirit is the Son of God. | ||
The Holy Spirit is the Son of God, and | ||
the Holy Spirit is the Son of God. | ||
The Holy Spirit is the Son of God, and | ||
the Holy Spirit is the Son of God. | ||
The Holy Spirit is the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit is the Son of God. | ||
Saturday, 26th of April, Annual Domini, 2025. | ||
We've got the Papal Funeral Special Edition here for you today. | ||
Steve Bannon is out on special assignment. | ||
So we had the opening scenes there from the Requiem playing in the background of Pope Francis' funeral that took place a few hours ago in Rome, not far away from me. | ||
We're going to be breaking down on the show today what this means for the Catholic Church generally, what this means. | ||
For American Catholics, for America, for the wider fight for Western civilization. | ||
Let's start straight away with Liz Yor, an old friend of the War Room. | ||
Liz, I know you've been involved for many years now. | ||
I think you founded your organization, Your Children, with a special emphasis on protecting the integrity of human rights with regards to the kids, a role that I think the Catholic Church has a unique voice to play on there. | ||
I gathered you up quite early this morning to watch the papal funeral. | ||
What were your first impressions watching that as a Catholic? | ||
Yes, as an Irish woman, I got up at 2 a.m. to see the last hurrah, as we Irish call it. | ||
And my first impression was, of course, the beauty and dignity of the Catholic liturgical service, the funeral mass, the magnificence of St. Peter's Square, the priests, the bishops, the cardinals. | ||
And, of course, reflecting on... | ||
These last dozen years of this pontifical regime, very few people know that I met Francis and was in his presence for about 20 minutes early on his papacy in 2013. | ||
I attended his human trafficking conference, and I might say I was a big fan of Francis. | ||
And when I attended it, I realized to my shock and horror that this was going to be a radical, radical papacy. | ||
They were describing human trafficking as a result of none other than climate change. | ||
So at that point, I... | ||
Recognize that I had to keep my eye on this papacy, on Francis, and really watch it closely and investigate everything that's happened. | ||
So I didn't start out being a critic of Francis, on the contrary. | ||
But after 12 years, there's a saying that God puts right at night the mess that Argentines make by the day. | ||
So I guess the real question is, This Argentine had 12 years to make messes in the church. | ||
And the question is, are the cardinals and the conclave willing to clean up the mess or to carry on the chaos? | ||
I was extremely concerned by the homily by Cardinal Rey, the dean of the cardinals. | ||
I felt it was instead of an opportunity to evangelize about the beauty of the faith and what this moment in, you know, when a person is handed over to God for judgment, what this means in our Catholic tradition. | ||
And instead, he used that opportunity to promote and celebrate the political agenda of Francis. | ||
Specifically, the mass on the border of the United States and Mexico in 2015, which I personally know and have researched, was the result of Ted McCarrick, the serial predator, had arranged this mass to promote mass immigration. | ||
And frankly, it was the trial run for the mass immigration we saw. | ||
And here is Trump sitting there with his wife at the funeral. | ||
Liz, let me stop you there, because you mentioned a couple of things that I want to dig down on. | ||
Firstly, however, you mentioned the conclave. | ||
And I want to come back to the presence of President Trump in a moment. | ||
But you mentioned the forthcoming conclave. | ||
When we spoke last night, you mentioned something to me about this secret Vatican agreement with... | ||
With the CCP, with China, which presumably contains a text that's so toxic, toxicity of which that text has never been received. | ||
Tell me a bit what you were telling me last night about what your plan is between now and the conclave regarding that secret Vatican deal. | ||
Well, frankly, I don't like to talk about the sweepstakes of who's the papabile. | ||
I think the more important thing is to talk about the issues. | ||
And number one issue is the exposure and release of the terms of this catastrophic secret China deal that has been a millstone around the neck of the Catholic Church in China, the faithful underground church. | ||
And I think that it is absolutely essential. | ||
That before a pope is elected by the conclave, that there needs to be a test as to what they will do with the China agreement. | ||
It needs to be exposed to the light of day. | ||
It's been renewed three times. | ||
It has caused- Untold suffering persecution in China and among Christians and Catholics, the arresting of bishops and laity and priests, the detaining and torturing of them. | ||
I want to see, now we've already had Filipino Bishop Tagle say he supports the The deal, the secret deal. | ||
I think, to me, that's a disqualifier. | ||
Same thing with Perlin, the Secretary of State, who was the architect of the China deal. | ||
This is a disaster. | ||
It needs to be absolutely revoked, declared null and void. | ||
There needs to be a formal apology to the Chinese Catholics and Christians by the Catholic Church. | ||
Buy the conclave, buy the next pope. | ||
That is the first order of business. | ||
So my hope is that the sweepstakes are about the issues that have plagued the church in the last 12 years and to right those issues and right the ship of state. | ||
Liz, what were you mentioning about President Trump's presence there? | ||
Because I know he's come under some criticism from traditionalist Catholics. | ||
For going to the funeral of a man who clearly loathed him, hated him, and used every opportunity he had to undermine President Trump and his MAGA agenda. | ||
What's your take on that? | ||
Could you just give me just two minutes before we head into the break? | ||
Sure. | ||
There's a lot of talk about Francis the Merciful, wasn't it? | ||
Although he repeatedly pilloried the pious, he demeaned holy people, he criticized Trump as unchristian, he got very involved and interfered in the political campaigns of 2016, | ||
2020, and 2024. | ||
And yet the merciful one, it seems to me, is Donald Trump. | ||
Who graciously, with his wife, attended the funeral. | ||
And that, to me, despite really being excoriated by Francis and criticizing Trump's efforts to restore safety to the border, to deport illegals, he has been in basically an intellectual wrestling match with Francis. | ||
And yet, nevertheless, he shows up as As did, actually, the Argentine president. | ||
But I think it just indicates the heart of Donald Trump, that he's willing to forgive and move forward. | ||
And, of course, the respect he has for the Catholic Church as an important institution, not only in global politics, but in the life of each and every citizen of the world. | ||
Liz, so your thesis is that President Trump's presence there at the funeral shouldn't be misconstrued. | ||
It's more showing reverence and respect to the office of the papacy rather than its recently departed occupant. | ||
Yes, that's right. | ||
We know Francis was a hardened political operative. | ||
That his vast agenda were the global politics of the elite of the New World Order. | ||
He promoted those from the moment he stepped out on the loggia. | ||
And so, nevertheless, it was Trump. | ||
Who put aside politics and political hurts and disagreements and respected, I think, the Catholic Church and the position of the papacy as an institution that requires his presence there, showed honor for the office, | ||
as well as respect for Catholics. | ||
And he said, you know, I have a lot of Catholic supporters, both in my administration and supporters. | ||
Stand by this. | ||
We'll be coming back to you just after this quick reportage from the funeral itself and then a quick break. | ||
We'll be back in just two minutes. | ||
unidentified
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Sanctum finis pepiosi, que vivi mundi pretium, | |
fructus centris generosi, prex et ludicentium. | ||
Nobis status, nobis status, ex intacta virgine, | ||
dim mundo conversatus, sparsu verbi semine, | ||
milo clausito. | ||
Cum manifestasset se Iesus, discipulis suis, e prandissen cum eis, dicit Simoni Petro Iesus, | ||
Ioannis, diligis me plusis. | ||
Dicitei, et siam domine, tussis qui amote. | ||
Dicitei, pace agnos meos. | ||
Dicitei, et siam domine, tussis qui amote. | ||
Dicitei, et siam domine, tussis qui amote. | ||
For those who need brushing up on the Latin, that was the section from the Gospel where the resurrected Christ asks St. Peter whether he loves him. | ||
And when Peter says, you know that I do, Christ says, feed my lambs. | ||
Okay, so this... | ||
This casket is brought to you by Birch Gold. | ||
Look, we all know the Vatican's sitting on a big pile of treasure. | ||
Everybody knows that. | ||
But the Vatican's not the only one. | ||
Not the only game in town to be hoarding gold. | ||
If you want to get in on the action, go to birchgold.com slash Bannon or text Bannon to 989898 and get your free copy of The Ultimate Guide for Gold. | ||
In the Trump era. | ||
Don't let the Vatican sweep up the whole of the gold supply, folks. | ||
Okay, so my next guest, Philip Willen, is, along with Tom Kington, one of the two legendary Rome correspondents for the Times of London. | ||
Philip, welcome on to the show. | ||
I think this is your first time on the show. | ||
You've got this great article out right now, headline... | ||
Trump's allies hope a firm friend will emerge from the Sistine Chapel. | ||
Good morning, welcome. | ||
Tell me what the thesis of your article is in a few words and then we'll break it down. | ||
unidentified
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Well, in essence, the article is about concerns over who might be in a position to influence the outcome of the conclave. | |
For political reasons, and obviously we've seen that with modern technology and almost unlimited financial resources, people can sway democratic elections in countries, | ||
despite the scale and the difficulty, obviously the role of Elon Musk in the... | ||
Elections in the United States, unlimited money and control of X, must have had some influence on the outcome. | ||
So the departure point was what sort of risks might there be that external temporal powers could exert an influence over the outcome of the deliberations of the cardinals? | ||
And that was the point of departure for mine. | ||
And I found particularly interesting a theory put forward by Alberto Meloni, who's an eminent church historian, about the possibility of what he called a Carolingian option, | ||
which goes back to the days of Charlemagne when, in the Holy Roman Empire, the emperor... | ||
Confirmed the Pope in his position, and the Pope would consecrate the Emperor. | ||
And the danger that Meloni indicated was that you could have a modern equivalent today if you have a figure arriving at a kind of imperial status in a position to exert... | ||
undue influence over the church. | ||
And in this case, in Meloni's view, this kind of imperial role could fall to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, who visited the Pope, in fact, just on the day before he died. | ||
So this is obviously going to be news, Philip, that will strike fear into the heart of progressive liberal journalists. | ||
But have MAGA applauding and cheering as they're listening to this. | ||
So it's actually a prospect of your thesis in this article. | ||
And we'll have the link up for everyone if they want to go after the show and read it. | ||
I strongly recommend it. | ||
It's a great article. | ||
So you're basically suggesting then that it's not beyond the realms of feasibility that Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, might be able to put their... | ||
on the scale perhaps in some way in the future conclave? | ||
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
Yes, that's the sort of starting point of the theory. | ||
I think in this case, as you in fact had mentioned to me when we spoke earlier, the chances of a genuinely conservative candidate coming out on top are Rather remote. | ||
Obviously, Francis has appointed 80% of the Cardinals in the College of Cardinals with the right to vote now, so it's unlikely that they're going to turn their backs on his progressive agenda. | ||
But it is a question looking further to the future, how temporal powers could... | ||
Interfere with the activities of the Roman Catholic Church in a world which is transformed by developments in technology, artificial intelligence, and money, huge concentrations of money in the hands of tech magnates. | ||
So going forward, temporal power in the form of the president of a... | ||
An enormously powerful country or people with a strong political agenda, but who are also interested in the influence of the Catholic Church. | ||
That's potentially, to my mind, a source of threat to the purity and genuineness of people who run the church and should be running it purely on spiritual lines. | ||
And not on political lines. | ||
I'd apply your opposing words there directly as a criticism of Pope Francis. | ||
But here's a question I have for you, because you spent many decades, in fact, most of your life, if I'm not mistaken, in Rome. | ||
You're an old hand there. | ||
Tell me something about this particular papal death and the reaction to it in Rome. | ||
Do you think it's different in tenor? | ||
Say perhaps to the death of John Paul II? | ||
unidentified
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I think it's been very interesting, actually, to see what has happened and the reaction of people in Rome. | |
I think there has been an enormous outpouring of sympathy for Pope Francis, partly because, due to the transparency that he himself insisted on, We were given an enormous amount of information about what a bad time he had in hospital when he was very seriously ill and twice came close to dying. | ||
And we heard from his doctors in unusual detail exactly how gruelling that had been. | ||
So I think there was a lot of sympathy. | ||
For him, that came out of that. | ||
And I think people also were impressed by the fact that he continued working and effectively, or one doesn't know how effectively, but in principle running the church, signing documents when he was very ill in hospital and on occasion only able to sign with his initial F for Franciscus. | ||
But he kept the documents coming out. | ||
He couldn't speak, but he kept teaching and ruling, despite his very, very serious condition in hospital. | ||
I think people were struck by that, and he was very much admired for it. | ||
And again, the follow-up to that was his last appearance on Easter Sunday. | ||
Where, again, he was in very poor shape, clearly suffering, but he insisted on delivering his blessing, albeit ought be, and then travelling around St. Peter's Square in the Popemobile, | ||
blessing babies just hours away from his death. | ||
I think people were very struck by the courage that he showed and the determination, the fact that he had no intention of... | ||
Resigning the papacy, he was going to keep playing the role of Pope really to the bitter end. | ||
I think people were struck by that. | ||
And a final thing, if I might, it was interesting that his decision, he went against tradition, deciding not to live in the Vatican where previous popes had lived. | ||
And he also decided not to be buried where most recent popes. | ||
He had been buried in the crypt of St. Peter's, and this led to him coming out once again in the Popemobile, crossing Rome, driving past the iconic sites of Rome, past the Colosseum, | ||
and being greeted by the people of Rome, who he had established a close relationship with, because he used to go out to the shops and to visit friends in a way that previous posts had not done. | ||
Philip, stand by. | ||
We're back in 30 seconds. | ||
I'm going to drill down on my question to you whether the degree of sentimentality and emotion has been the same for Francis as it was for JP2. | ||
Stay tuned. | ||
We're back in three minutes. | ||
unidentified
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back in three minutes. | |
We're at the helm filling in for Steve Bannon. | ||
Well, if you live in a marble palace like a cardinal or a pope, you're pretty safe, I guess. | ||
But if, like me, you don't... | ||
Check out... | ||
The million-dollar triple-lock protection, 14-day free trial, folks. | ||
Strongly recommended. | ||
Back to Philip Willen. | ||
Phil, I just want to ask you this question before you go, because I know no one's been in Rome for as long as you have. | ||
Tell me, because you were there for when John Paul II died. | ||
This is something that we do want to drill down on, the war in policy wants to drill down on. | ||
Is there a difference? | ||
In level of intensity between the affections, say, sentimentality, say, emotions displayed at the death of Francis compared to that of Jean-Paul II? | ||
unidentified
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I think it's difficult to answer that question. | |
Clearly, the degree of grief that people feel varies. | ||
Some people... | ||
Those particularly close, personally close to the Pope, obviously extremely upset. | ||
Huge crowds have come out to bid him farewell. | ||
But I think what has been interesting is that despite the sad occasion of a death, the mood has been quite upbeat. | ||
And possibly also the very large crowds, because a lot of pilgrims were in Rome, in any case, for the Jubilee, and in particular this weekend for the canonization of Carlo Acutis. | ||
So a lot of young people who were in Rome for the canonization of the first millennial saint and found that instead they were going to the funeral of a pope. | ||
I think a feeling that people were encouraged by the Christian message that the end of life on earth was not the end of everything for believers. | ||
I think, obviously, there was grief. | ||
There was a very big crowd. | ||
But there was a sort of upbeat atmosphere at the end of the day. | ||
And I might also mention that the Italian authorities really handled what was a logistics nightmare with great skill. | ||
They got huge crowds. | ||
Into and out of St. Peter's Square in an orderly manner. | ||
They got in the world leaders from across the globe in an orderly manner, and they handled this very delicate, massive operation with great skill and tact. | ||
So I think they deserve They deserve praise for the way they carried it off. | ||
And also, I think it was interesting to see the photographs of Donald Trump meeting with Vladimir Zelensky and President Macron of France and Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom in... | ||
St. Peter's Basilica before the beginning of the funeral and also the one-on-one meeting that he had with Zelensky to discuss the war in Ukraine. | ||
I know that Pope Francis, in his spiritual testament, talked of dedicating the suffering at the end of his life to the cause of world peace. | ||
And the fact that these leaders could come together To discuss trying to end a very bloody and destructive war in Ukraine, actually in St. Peter's Basilica itself, | ||
on the occasion of his funeral, hopefully trying to find an intelligent peace solution for the war. | ||
that closer, one could think of it almost as a miracle worked by the Pope on this very extraordinary and historic occasion. | ||
Listen, don't, don't, | ||
It's a perfect point to end on, but if you're going to try and use that as the miracle for canonisation, I think a number of eyebrows are going to be raised in scepticism. | ||
Philip Willen, thanks very much for coming on the show. | ||
unidentified
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No one has been saying Santo Subito that I'm aware of. | |
Nobody, nobody, nobody this time round. | ||
Listen, where do people go to get your first-rate writings in the Times of London? | ||
unidentified
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Where are you on social media? | |
I'm not particularly present on social media at all. | ||
I'm a representative of the dinosaur generation. | ||
So I think you just have to go to the website of the newspaper. | ||
Times.co.uk? | ||
unidentified
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Yes, the Times. | |
Perfect. | ||
Philip Willen, thanks very much indeed for joining us today for our papal funeral special. | ||
Great. | ||
Well, my next guest is Frank Walker, the founder and editor of, I think, one of the most important news aggregators out there, Canon 212, which is... | ||
Put it in simple terms, it's basically the traditional Catholic answer to the Drudge Report. | ||
Frank, welcome onto the show. | ||
Many people suggested to me, when I said that you were going to be on this morning, that the two of us together, are we going to be... | ||
Okay, look, I've just heard that there's some technical issues, I think. | ||
Do we have Frank, or should we cut back to Liz, your guys? | ||
OK, there are technical issues. | ||
Liz, let's come back to you. | ||
You were listening to that discussion that we just had with Philip Willen from the time about Trump's allies' hope for a firm friend emerging from the Sistine Chapel. | ||
What's your take on the case? | ||
Do you think the administration has any reasonable chances of finding someone who's going to support what they're trying to do, trying to reverse, if you will, the present? | ||
Catholic Church's position, for example, on unrestricted illegal immigration, or is this just habitual? | ||
You know, I think the enemies to the church are not from outside, but from within. | ||
The St. Gallen Mafia, as we know, that was largely responsible for the election of Jorge Bergoglio, came from modernist cardinals. | ||
And I don't think for one minute that they're going to give up the power that they feel that they have exerted in the last 12 years. | ||
That may or may not have been in conjunction with the masters of the universe, the global. | ||
I suspect it was. | ||
But when you look at every single issue that has been promoted by Francis, it's been really the gold standard of the globalists. | ||
LGBT ideology, gender ideology, the Islamicization of Europe, also the mass migration that has happened in the United States. | ||
All of these are the radical agenda of the globalists. | ||
I think the threat is- It's going to continue from inside the church. | ||
By the way, there's been reports that two years ago, there was a reconstitution of what we call the St. Gallen Mafia in preparation for the next election, the next conclave. | ||
So I don't have that kind of confidence that we're going to have a new change of leadership. | ||
I hope and pray we are an Easter people. | ||
We have hope. | ||
But I cannot. | ||
We do not see the globalists who are embedded in the conclave. | ||
And by the way, Pope Francis has appointed 80% of the cardinals who will be voting in this conclave. | ||
So it's very likely that they share his globalist agenda. | ||
Secondly, I would argue with Philip that this has not been the pope of dialogue or transparency. | ||
He was highly secretive. | ||
About his dealings with China. | ||
He has refused to really disclose what actually went on with Ted McCarrick in China. | ||
He has not been open about his what I consider the he has been a papal predator protector for the last 12 years. | ||
And so I'm very concerned about the victims of clergy abuse that have not been served by this. | ||
By this pontificate. | ||
And secondly, I would say that traditional Latin mass supporters have not had a hearing. | ||
There's been no dialogue with them. | ||
And they deserve a full hearing with respect to the Latin mass, which is thriving and growing largely among young people. | ||
And if I might add, despite France's best Intentions to suppress that. | ||
Can I just go back a bit to what you were saying before? | ||
You said two things, and I just want to break that down. | ||
And we've got about a minute and a half. | ||
What did you mean when you said that you think that the main dangerous threats to the Catholic Church are within rather than without? | ||
And what were you referring to when you mentioned the St. Garland Mafia? | ||
The St. Gallen Mafia, Cardinal Daniels, who has since passed away, he's the Cardinal of Brussels, Belgium, and a number of other cardinals from Germany. | ||
And from England, including Cardinal Ted McCarrick, the notorious sexual predator, met repeatedly way back in the 1998s going forward to replace what they would consider to be the medieval pontificate of John Paul II and impose a new modernist agenda on the Catholic Church. | ||
They were not successful in 2005. | ||
They had lobbied very hard for Bergoglio in 2000. | ||
In 2005 election, Benedict, who was clearly opposed to the globalist plan and would never have allowed the LGBT ideology or the Islamicization of Europe to occur during his pontificate, was elected in 2005. | ||
We know what happened in 2013, the shock of the world that Benedict stepped down and the election of Bergoglio. | ||
And this is interesting. | ||
When we hear all the talk about the Papabile in 2013, Ben, there was No mention in the betting markets of Jorge Bergoglio. | ||
He was number 40th on the list. | ||
So what they did, what the St. Gallen Mafia did, who lobbied and really politicked for Bergoglio, they kept it close to the vest. | ||
They counted their votes. | ||
And I think that's a warning shot for all of us right now, that this may be going on as we speak. | ||
The sweepstakes that are going on with respect to Papaville need to have that cautionary tale that there may be a stalking horse out there, but the real modernist will come forward at the end. | ||
Liz, hold on to that point. | ||
We're going to come back to that later on in the show. | ||
We've also got Frank Walker, John Yepp, and Sid Lucasen coming up to break down the events of today on this War Room Papal Funeral Special. | ||
Stay with us, we'll be back in just two minutes. | ||
unidentified
|
with us. | |
Stay with us. | ||
You can see on the screen there now is the casket of Pope Francis being led to his eventual resting place at St. Mary Major, break-proof condition. | ||
He's not being buried at St. Peter's. | ||
OK, so my next guest, we'll carry him on over into the second hour, Frank Walker. | ||
I'll give the proper introduction again because the line collapsed just as we're about to cut to him. | ||
Frank Walker, founder, editor of the Canon 212, which is a news aggregator site. | ||
Really, I think of it as being the Catholic, the traditionalist Catholic, the conservative Catholic answer to the Drudge Report. | ||
Absolutely essential viewing. | ||
I go there several times a day just to see what's going on in Catholic circles. | ||
When I was telling people that Frank was coming on the show today, they were joking with me, my God, on the day of Pope Francis... | ||
Bruno, are you guys going to be able to be reverent and respectful? | ||
And I said, we can do reverence. | ||
We can do respectful. | ||
We can do mourning. | ||
This is the war room. | ||
I just want to say that there. | ||
Okay. | ||
So, Frank, holding on to those thoughts, what was the view today of the dead, heretical antipope in the Walker household? | ||
unidentified
|
Well, you know, I don't think that you could ever say it was reverent. | |
It's not really reverent. | ||
I've heard those complaints this week, too. | ||
And, you know, I just don't think it's good to have too much respect for things that are contemptible. | ||
And, you know, Pope Francis is not a Catholic, and I find it, and I don't think I'm alone in this. | ||
I find it a little upsetting to the things that he has done to the church. | ||
And so I think it would be misleading to have reverence at a time when it's not really appropriate. | ||
I don't want to be misleading. | ||
I try to tell the truth. | ||
So that's how I feel about this funeral. | ||
I'm seeing him go into that beautiful church, St. Mary Major, that he went to all the time. | ||
And I wish that he wasn't going to be put in there. | ||
Though he was, you know, he went to Mary all the time. | ||
He went to that church all the time. | ||
And he, you know, appeared reverent. | ||
And maybe he was prayerful with Mary. | ||
Mary would have expected him to be a faithful follower of Christ and a good leader of the church. | ||
And when I see that tomb in that place with all those holy things, you know, it's just disturbing. | ||
Frank, nobody sees contemporary Catholic news breaking in real time and follows it as closely as you do. | ||
You see literally all the headlines and then you curate them and you give it a little bit of analysis as you put them up there on your site, Canon 212. | ||
Tell me something. | ||
How do you think the formal Catholic press has conducted itself? | ||
During the last 12 years of the Francis, inverted commas, papacy, inverted commas, do you compare that, if you will, to the mainstream media's coverage of Francis? | ||
Because my take on this is actually, and I'm never a person normally that will say much positive about the mainstream media, but it tends to be that their analysis of what's going on in Rome is more reliable. | ||
But anything with the word Catholic in it is going to deliberately try to mislead you. | ||
Now, you're the expert on this. | ||
What do you think? | ||
unidentified
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Well, I see what you mean about the mainline press. | |
And we try to get the secular press involved if it has something that's related. | ||
The Catholic press is just really, really hard to get a straight fact out of. | ||
This week... | ||
They've been, I think, just terrible. | ||
And I'm glad that there's someplace for the people to go where they can get the distilled news. | ||
You have to distill a lot more. | ||
It was all gushing. | ||
I mean, it was stories about how, you know, Francis, like one of the probability, Colonel Zuppi, said, be on fire with the love of the Francis. | ||
You know, they have always had this element of worship because the people of worshiping Francis. | ||
Francis being sort of like a demigod, because in so many ways he's replacing the church, and to replace the church he needs to elevate himself to a high level. | ||
Oh, when I hugged the Francis and I was a cripple, I quivered, and I felt a great warmth. | ||
That's the kind of thing that you get out of the Catholic press right now. | ||
You can't get any facts. | ||
You know, there is a way, no, for sure, it is just sort of... | ||
You're on unrestrained sentimentality right now. | ||
It's mostly unreadable. | ||
There is, look, we've got a minute to the break and then if you wouldn't mind staying on into the second hour. | ||
There is a wider point, you know, when you mentioned this about the role of the Pope in popular Catholic imagination, especially in the modern era, especially in the era of modern communications. | ||
Things, you know, and it hasn't started with Francis. | ||
Arguably... | ||
But this massive concentration towards the role of the Pope in contemporary Catholic prayer lives and imaginations, | ||
that wasn't there for the previous 1,900 years because there's no means for it to be there. | ||
Give me your 30 seconds on that and then we'll carry on after the break. | ||
unidentified
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Well, yeah, it must have been a lot easier back when he was just there as standing for the faith instead of having to be some sort of a performer all the time. | |
And I think they picked Francis because he liked to be a performer. | ||
I don't know what kind of a performer Cardinal Perrin is. | ||
And with all the meaty behind Francis, that's what they used him as. | ||
He was their machine. | ||
And yeah, I think it diminishes the role because just every single word out of Francis' mouth. | ||
You know, people are listening to the things that he did that were bad. | ||
Every word in the press was bad every day. |