POPE JOHN PAUL I OR JOSEPH SOLD BY HIS BRETHREN

Last year we studied the post-conciliar period from 1966 to 1978, during which time the Church was « attacked from all sides ». We have now come to 1978, the year when Albino Cardinal Luciani was almost unanimously elected to the sovereign pontificate on 26 August and took the name of John Paul I.

Only a few progressivist cardinals (for example, Koenig who later would mastermind the election of John Paul I’s successor, Karol Wojtyla) were disappointed by the conclave’s choice and attempted to oppose it. But after their failure, they publicly expressed no reservation.

It must be said that the post-conciliar years were marked by a collapse of the Church. The conciliar apostasy was producing its fruits, for example, in the clergy: during the twenty years from 1965 to 1985, seventy thousand priests were defrocked. In this situation, while lucid minds were tempted to despair of the future of the Church, our Father reacted by expressing his faith in her indefectibility. He was convinced that her perfections, especially her holiness and infallibility, would not remain obscured forever. Thus, what a bad Pope had destroyed, another Pope would restore.

His very supernatural hope was in keeping with his empiric analysis of the situation. He already foresaw that at Paul VI’s death, moved by the desire to see a firm authority put the Church back into order, the members of the conclave would elect a good Catholic Pope.

During the conclave, he explained, the cardinals will avoid the extremes and vote neither for a reactionary like Siri nor for a demagogue adventurer like Suenens... Their choice will be one who is a witness to Vatican II’s moderate majority, a man who is learned and impartial. « But he will be a strong man into whose hands they can lay the whole set of accounts of the bankruptcy. » Our Father forecast the election of « Cardinal Felici », who had distinguished himself by his defence of Catholic law in the Synod of 1971. (CCR n° 31, pp. 1, 2).

In the course of a lecture given in the winter of 1977-1978, our Father added: « At the conclave, Felici or another Italian cardinal unknown to us, will appear to be another St. Pius X, for example his successor in Venice, Cardinal Luciani. »

A few months later, after Paul VI’s death on 6 August, Albino cardinal Luciani was elected to the See of Peter, on the second day of the conclave, Saturday, 26 August 1978.

« The enduring memory is of that smile, David Yallop wrote. After the gloom and the agonizing of Paul VI, the contrast was an extraordinary shock. »

A HEROIC SMILE.

In the aftermath of the new Pope’s election, our Father exulted in his editorial: « It is astonishing and wonderful [...]. Beneath this smiling face, in this wise holiness, revealing the fervent disciple of St. Francis de Sales, all have seen, admired, accepted and loved these two major virtues: a doctrinal rigour and moral inflexibility tempered by great goodness towards people, especially the poorest. » (“Another saint Pius X without knowing it” CCR n° 102, September 1978, p. 4)

The new Pope inspired the humble faithful with enthusiasm by the very style of his allocutions, which were peppered with images, anecdotes, memories, aphorisms and parables. « How well he preaches! We can understand everything », a working-class woman exclaimed before a cardinal.

Our Father very soon loved John Paul I because in his gestures, prayers and words religion once again appeared or rather radiated, after twenty years of darkness (1958-1978).

Beginning with his first general audience on Wednesday, 6 September 1978, John Paul I preached on humility.

Thus he began to purify the Church from « the pride of the reformers », which the Abbé de Nantes had denounced in his Letter to his Holiness Pope Paul VI, number 1 of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

« Before God the attitude of the just man is that of Abraham who said: “I am but dust and ashes before You, O Lord!” We must see ourselves as small before God. When I say: “Lord, I believe”, I am not at all ashamed of feeling like a little child before his mother; he believes in his mother; and I believe in the Lord, in what He has revealed to me. »

After having spoken about faith on 13 September, the following week his preaching on Christian hope revealed his deep inner joy at knowing himself « swept up in a destiny of salvation that would one day open onto Paradise […]. I would love it, he explained, if you had read an Easter Sunday sermon of Saint Augustine’s about the alleluia. The true alleluia, he said, will be sung by us in Paradise. It will be the alleluia of a love that is full. Here below we sing the alleluia of a love that remains unsatisfied, an alleluia of hope. »

Finally, on 27 September, John Paul I continued his truly evangelical teaching by speaking of the third theological virtue, charity, as ever with the same joyous simplicity.

« In a word, to love means making a journey [like Paul VI, Most Holy Father?], running with all one’s heart towards the object loved. The Imitation of Christ says, “He who loves runs, flies and leaps with joy.” (Book 3, Chapter 5,4) To love God is therefore to travel with one’s heart towards God. It is a really beautiful journey! When I was a child, I was thrilled by the journeys described by Jules Verne: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, From The Earth To The Moon, Around The World In Eighty Days, etc. But the journeys of love for God are far more interesting. An account of them can be found in the lives of the Saints. St. Vincent de Paul, whose feast we celebrate today, for example, is a giant of charity [...].

« This journey also involves sacrifice, but this must not hold us back. Jesus is on the Cross. Do you want to embrace Him? You cannot do less, then, than to bend over the Cross and let yourself be pricked by a thorn from the crown on His Head (cf. St. Francis de Sales, Oeuvres, Annecy, Vol. 21, p. 153). »

This smiling Pope was encountering thorns and crosses on his way. Mgr Martin, Prefect of the Pontifical House, noted in his diary, right from 28 August:

« The Pope is not taken in by popular acclamations. He reminded me of those which greeted Pius IX [on the day of his accession] and added: “And after that came the crosses! For me the first of them have already arrived”. »

« You see, the Holy Father also confided, I’m always smiling but, believe me, deep down I’m suffering. »

His smile and even his happy laugh occasionally shot through with the keenest emotion. They were the expression of his unalterable simplicity and also an affirmation of heroic self-giving, of trust in God and in the Church.

A SPONTANEOUS CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE.

From the first days of his pontificate, John Paul I’s extraordinary gifts and charisms for touching and warming hearts, provoked a spontaneous Catholic renaissance, which our Father celebrated:

« This Pope, religious and firm in the Faith, so good and so gracious, only had to appear to restore the heartfelt unity of the Christian people over the essential, which is the worship of God, faith in Him, personal piety, the labour of the virtues, and above all, brotherly love. The Church felt herself restored to life, freed from the stranglehold of post-conciliar novelties, from the tyranny of reformist intellectuals, from the intolerable demands of being open to the world. »

The month following his death, our Father wrote:

« Our chefs de cercle were already reporting from the parishes, the priests, the monasteries and the Catholic press a spontaneous and not forced return to the joyful, pure religion we had known before. » (“The saint that God gave us”, CCR n° 103)

When listening to John Paul I, the Abbé de Nantes also noted that a great many of his remarks, said with kindness and humour, were tending to rectify ideas that the past fifteen years had kept topsy-turvy. He said that « he had good reason to believe that the times before the conciliar reform were back, and, consequently, that tradition had undergone only a partial caesura, one that was more apparent than real. The Church would recover the “marvellous Aladdin’s lamp » that his wife had foolishly given to the magician. »

The archbishop of Venice had used this story of Aladdin’s lamp as the allegory of the change of catechisms:

« The magician, at a certain moment, wants to take his revenge. He goes through the streets shouting: “I trade new lamps for old ones.” That seems to be an excellent bargain. It is in reality a swindle. Aladdin’s wife is credulous and let herself be taken in. During the absence of her husband, she goes up into the attic, takes the lamp whose supernatural powers she is unaware of, and gives it to the magician. The scoundrel snatches it and abandons in exchange for it all his worthless sparkling brass lamps.

« This recurs: from time to time, a magician, a mystic, a philosopher or a politician passes and offers to exchange merchandise. Take care! The ideas offered by certain magicians, even though they may sparkle, are nothing but brass and will not last. Those that they call obsolete and old-fashioned are often God’s ideas, of which it is written that they will not pass. »

Yet, seemingly impressed by certain so-called modern ideas, John Paul I could not clearly see how to resolve the doctrinal and moral difficulties that they occasion. In his homily of 23 September, in Saint John Lateran’s, he confided this fact with great modesty:

« The second reading, taken from the last chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, is applicable to the faithful in Rome. I confess that what it says about obedience embarrasses me a little. It is difficult nowadays to be convincing when one weighs the rights of the human person against the rights of authority and the law! »

Thus, John Paul I was already touching a raw nerve, without knowing how to heal it. He was not a doctor of the Faith who had conceived a vast synthesis that would have allowed him to oppose modern errors with a renewed and “total” body of Catholic doctrine.

But our Father was that “Doctor” who was preparing this body of doctrine, as we shall see during this camp.

Nevertheless, once his elevation to the sovereign pontificate had freed him from the blind obedience that his modesty had inclined him to pledge to Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, Albino Luciani was ready to re-examine certain novelties of the Second Vatican Council, and even to retract certain of its errors. He would carry out this task with the assistance of the Holy Spirit and armed with his intention to satisfy the great discipline of the Church and the requirements of Tradition.

Of course, our Father recognised that John Paul I claimed to accept the entire heritage of Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council, but « when in dogmatic discussions he is confronted with the truth of yesterday and the day before yesterday, he will find himself before God. Then, have no fear; it is the traditional Catholic truth that will triumph ».

First part
ALBINO LUCIANI IN THE SCHOOL OF ST. PIUX X

Albino Luciani was like a brother of Giuseppe Sarto, who came from a poor Venetian family, and who became Pope under the name of Pius X.

« The first thing we notice, our Father remarked, is the identity of these two priestly vocations making their way by regular steps up the hierarchical ladder until they reached the summit of honour and ecclesiastical responsibility. Yet they both started so modestly and so obviously free from ambition that, in each case, the word “career” would be entirely out of place. » (John Paul I, the Pope of the Secret)

This comparison is quite apparent in the film that we made in the year that the Secret was divulged (“the elect of Our Lady”, af 18, November 2000 [available in French only] ). Abundant examples confirm this initial intuition of our Father, and everything we have subsequently learned verifies it.

« All his youth, our Father wrote in December 1978, Albino Luciani drank from the living source of the old religion, vigorously restored – especially in Italy – by St. Pius X. » (CCR n° 107, p. 12)

Our Father could not have said it better because at the major seminary of Belluno where Luciani received his training, the teaching staff had entirely been renewed in 1909 in order to turn out the modernists.

We have many edifying accounts about the young Albino, who claimed to be « enamoured of the Church », and his life at seminary.

« He was the most gifted among his companions, who were themselves not devoid of intelligence, one of his teachers wrote. But he did not flaunt his superiority. He did not seem to be conscious of the gifts with which he was endowed. »

« He did not work for himself, one of his friends related. The door of his room remained open, and he always showed himself ready to give explanations. »

« He was always amiable, quiet, serene, unless you stated something that was inaccurate, then he was like a spring. I learned that in front of him one had to speak carefully. Any muddled thinking and you were in danger with him. »

Once he was ordained a priest, he entered, as Don Sarto had done, the Apostolic Union of the Clergy, which imposed a rule of life on its members. Here is the formula of commitment:

« For the greater Glory of God and to work for my sanctification and the salvation of souls with greater effectiveness, I willingly adhere to this union, and I wholeheartedly offer and devote myself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through the intercession of Mary. »

His memories of his time as a young curate in Agordo reveal his good heart. We sense that he was moved to tears as he evoked the laborious, ever so hard life of his former parishioners.

« On the way, I ran across workers returning from the mine, who were bathed in sweat and covered with dust. Poor people! What sacrifices!

« I had no money. I believe that I was a curate who always had empty pockets. These years, however, rank among the most beautiful of my priesthood. »

Only two years after his priestly ordination, he was appointed Vice Rector of the Belluno seminary. « Few people knew him outside the seminary, his former rector pointed out, for he did not want to play a “role in the forefront”. He spent much time in the well-stocked seminary library preparing his lectures or homilies, in order to teach the strictest and most scholarly theology in a language accessible to everyone. »

While this professor who was so much beloved by his seminarians, only had one ambition, to retire in his native mountains in order to carry out the humble ministry as curate for a parish priest, he was appointed Pro-Chancellor of the diocese in 1947.

He published his catechetical crumbs. In this small treatise on teaching catechism, he recommended the use of so-called “active” methods, but its substance was so traditional that, as Pope, he did not want his book to be republished. He knew that its principles and its doctrine were not in line with the new pastoral theory promoted by the Second Vatican Council.

These lines suffice to reveal the opposition:

« If you put the catechism aside, you will find nothing, no means that can make children and adults good. Should you put forward “human dignity”? Children do not understand what it is, and the grown-ups could not care less about it. Should you put forward the “categorical imperative” [of Kant’s morality]? It would be worse than worse. »

« On the other hand, it is quite a different matter if you speak to the young and grown-ups about God, who sees everything, rewards and chastises, who has given a holy and inviolable Law and who offers Sacraments in order to strengthen our will, which, although good, is so weak and fickle. »

At that time, out of love for the cross and with the view to saving souls, he endured an infirmity that an operation could have healed. « Some days, a confrere testified, the pain of suffering marked his face more deeply. But he refused to undergo a surgical operation because he wanted to suffer. He thought that he would be able to bear this cruel hardship without failing in his duties.

« As for me, as soon as I learned about his hardship, I could not help noticing the deep wrinkles that furrowed his face, which were an indication of the pain he was enduring with great faith. He believed in the value of sacrifices that are accepted willingly. I think that his smile, this smile, which has moved the whole world, was also the fruit of his sufferings accepted out of love for God. »

In 1954 Don Luciani went up to Pius X’s canonisation ceremony, which was the solemn approbation by Pius XII of the combat waged by his predecessor for the defence of the dogmas of the Faith against Modernism.

Through Providence’s thoughtful attention, while he was travelling by train for Rome, Don Luciani found himself in the same compartment as the saint’s relatives, Mgr Parolin, as well as Rosetta and Nilla Parolin, who related to him numerous anecdotes about their great-uncle.

He attended the canonisation ceremony with fervent enthusiasm. « I saw the Pope, the cardinals, the bishops, an immense crowd, he wrote. I saw the living faith, the pulsating Church, with all their manifest signs of catholicity and holiness. »

When he was appointed Bishop of Vittorio Veneto in 1958, he « chose Humilitas as his motto, not in order to stake a claim to humility, our Father explained, but to remind others what he really was: a poor, simple man of the earth, an unassuming priest of Jesus Christ. »

The soul of the new bishop expressed itself in this homily, pronounced on 6 January 1959 at Forno di Canale, his native village:

« It did seem to me, in those days, that the Lord made use of me according to His ways of old: He takes the lowly from the roadside mud and raises them up, He detaches countrymen from their fields, fishermen from their nets and their lakes, and makes Apostles out of them. There are certain things that the Lord wishes to write, not in bronze or in marble, but simply in the dust, so that, should the writing survive without being effaced or scattered by the wind, it may be plain that everything is the Lord’s work and owing to His grace alone. I am just a simple man of my times, I am one who comes from the fields, I am nothing but poor plain dust; on this dust the Lord has inscribed the Episcopal dignity of the illustrious diocese of Vittorio Veneto. If ever any good should come of all this, let it now be very clear that it can only be the fruit of Our Lord’s bounty, grace and mercy. »

He then developed a rich teaching on the three theological virtues and ended his speech with an exhortation well marked with his supernatural spirit:

« We are all poor sinners. Do you see a true Christian? Then, say to yourself: “If he is so good, it is because he has made a lot of effort.” It requires effort to become good. But then comes the reward; it is the Lord who gives it. In this world there is no true happiness: there are only a few moments of happiness, here and there, every now and then. But this is not happiness. True happiness only exists in Paradise. »

In the spring of 1959 the young bishop went to Venice in order to venerate the reliquary of St. Pius X, transported from Rome. In several homilies given, he expressed his admiration for all the Saint’s works. He recalled the pressing recommendations the saint had made especially with regards to the catechism: « Today, the work of the catechist is the greatest of all forms of apostolate. »

The other prevailing concern of this disciple of St. Pius X was the seminary: « It is the heart of the diocese and the apple of my eye », he said.

The recommendations he addressed to seminarians on 20 September 1977, one year before his elevation to the sovereign pontificate, allow one to augur what the magisterium of this Pope would have been. (insert below)

Second part
THE SHOCK AND THE DISTRESS CAUSED BY VATICAN II

In 1962, at the approach of the Second Vatican Council’s opening, Mgr Luciani did not want the members of his diocese to feed on illusions: « It is not good, he wrote to them, to expect extraordinary innovations, miraculous initiatives, astounding results from the Council. » It is exactly what our Father, parish priest of Villemaur, was writing at the same time. (Letter to My Friends n° 120, of 11 October 1962).

ECUMENISM.

Mgr Albino Luciani admittedly had confidence in Pope John XXIII, who wanted to promote a new ecumenism with Protestants. He, however, warned the members of his diocese that « extremely serious difficulties » remained: « We cannot sacrifice the truth, he said to them. If we are ready to make many concessions on matters of liturgy and discipline, on the other hand, we can concede nothing in the realm of dogma. »

In the course of the first session of the Council, the young bishop was disconcerted when the modernist minority seized power and rejected all the preparatory schemata. His Franciscan friend, Fr. Pancheri, wrote: « The Vatican II period had been almost traumatic for him. In fact, he found himself confronted with new theological views that often seemed to him to be opposed to the positions his theological training had guaranteed for him until then. » For a very good reason, since he had been trained in St. Pius X’s anti-modernist school!

Moreover, he was quite open about it: before every general congregation, « once I pass through the door of St. Peter’s Basilica, given that “every good thief has his devotion”, I bear left and go to say a prayer at St. Pius X’s altar; I imitate many other Fathers. » Thus he was not the only one!

In the conciliar aula, he never took the floor, but he followed all the debates with utmost attention, and then, once he was alone in his room, he wrote documented notes for the Council’s sub-commissions.

COLLEGIALITY.

According to the divine Constitution of the Church, the Pope is the supreme and immediate head of everyone, bishops and faithful. Nevertheless, the innovators wanted the bishops – together in a “college” – to have power also over the universal Church, which would encroach upon the personal power that each bishop has over his diocese and personal flock.

“Collegiality” is the exaltation of an alleged representative, collective power held by the bishops that is pitted against the absolute and personal power of the Sovereign Pontiff. Furthermore, since this collegial power was to be exercised under the parliamentary mode, it would tend to supplant and to thwart the personal authority of each bishop in his diocese.

In the course of these controversies, Mgr Luciani detected the weakness contained in the line of argument, for example, that the future archbishop of Paris, Mgr Veuillot developed to give a scriptural basis for the novelty:

« If I have understood well, Mgr Veuillot has affirmed that the Epistles of Paul obviously mentioned the collegiality of bishops and even spoke of it as a fundamental reality for the Church. In support of his theory, he quotes a few texts wherein St. Paul calls the bishops “brethren”, “co-operators”, “companions” of Christ or of the Gospel [...].

« In my humble opinion, such a line of argument could possibly hold together if the expressions taken from St. Paul were exclusively applied to bishops. But to tell the truth, even in the passages quoted, they also apply to laymen, and moreover, to women [...].

« The collegiality of bishops in the fulfilment of their apostolic task perhaps does have some basis, but it is not found in the quotations taken from St. Paul. »

Furthermore, Mgr Luciani did not see how to bring the novelty into line with the traditional doctrine:

« The question has been put: How can bishops both submit to the supreme power of the Sovereign Pontiff [this is the traditional doctrine] and exercise the supreme power with him [this is the novelty]? I must admit that I have not found any satisfactory explanation on this issue. » (Pour l’Église, Vol. 4, p. 34)

Nevertheless, when Paul VI promulgated the Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, Mgr Luciani accepted the novelty and explained to his clergy how, in his opinion, it could take root in the Tradition:

« If you had studied in Belluno, as I did, if you had worked at the seminary library of this city, you could have read the book On the primacy of the Holy See. Its author, who was born in Belluno, was a very intelligent Camaldolese monk who had been raised to the See of Peter and took the name of Gregory XVI. Now, when he was a theology student, he took part in a disputatio theologica [i.e., a theological controversy]. In his thesis, he defended the following point of view: by the very fact that bishops are consecrated, taken together and obviously together with the Pope, they have power super universam Ecclesiam, over the universal Church.

« A Venetian canon who was attending the disputatio refuted this assertion. The student defended it, the canon retorted, and both became heated. The Patriarch of Venice stood up: “That’s enough! he said. That’s enough! I do not want a fight!” The meeting was closed. The Camaldolese monks, however, sided with the student. »

Once he became Pope, the aforesaid student had his defence republished without modifying his thesis. Thus, according to Luciani, Gregory XVI had upheld and defended Collegiality.

Nevertheless, this case did not suffice to settle the question. « Collegiality, he observed, has not been the object of a dogmatic definition. It was solemnly proclaimed in a Council; it has not been formally defined. It is a very odd case. We shall see theologians tearing their hair out over it. »

But why have conciliar novelties not become the object of dogmatic definitions? he said, amazed. Here is the answer: because they ran counter to previous dogmatic definitions. It is the reason why the question of the theological qualification of the Acts of the Council, a question that bishops and periti have posed on several occasions, has never received an answer from the supreme authority.

As I have recently recalled in my Open letter to Mgr Simon, Pope Paul VI eluded this question by substituting for the formula of promulgation provided for in Vatican II’s regulations, another much more solemn formula. In this formula, the Pope claimed to promulgate the Acts of the Council « in the Holy Spirit », but without meeting the conditions required for this divine assistance.

Mgr Luciani is likely never to have suspected Paul VI’s “forgery”. But, once he had become Pope and was invested with supreme authority, he would certainly not have left unanswered the question of the theological qualification of the Acts of the Council, acts that Abbé de Nantes publicly declared heretical, schismatic, and scandalous!

In the meantime, the humble Bishop of Vittorio Veneto modestly accepted all the novelties of the Council by striving to make them conform to the traditional doctrine.

PROMOTION OF THE LAITY.

Thus, the Council exalted the laity by ceasing to recognise the superiority of the religious state – and its three vows of evangelical perfection, chastity, poverty and obedience – over the secular state.

According to the Council, « everyone is not only called to holiness, which is a classical concept, but is declared to be in a fit state to attain it in his secular life. That is the new, inconceivable, unpardonable falsehood on the Faith » (cf. CRC n° 61, October 1972).

In order to give a traditional interpretation to this innovation, Mgr Luciani referred to the teaching of the Bishop of Geneva:

« The Council advances on the path opened by St. Francis de Sales. Pius IX said that the way he recommends to all the faithful in his Introduction to devout life and that leads to the Lord is so easy that, from then on, true piety [a significant annotation of Mgr Luciani indicates: or holiness] has made its way to the thrones of kings, the tents of officers, to tribunals, banks, factories, villages. »

The Abbé de Nantes observed that Mgr Luciani’s speeches were developing according to a scheme that ran contrary to the one that Paul VI usually followed. Instead of recalling the Church’s traditional teaching with a view to linking it to the revolutionary novelty, to imposing the novelty more surely: yes, of course, to Tradition, but also and above all to the novelty... Mgr Luciani said: Today, since the Council, it is said that... but the revealed truth must not be forgotten; it is this reminder of Tradition that was the strong point of his speeches.

Thus, with regards to the Constitution of the Church, the bishop adhered to the conciliar heresy but in the end removed its venom: « The Council taught that the Church is both the people of God and communitarian even before being hierarchical [...]. Thus, the Pope and bishops are not above but within and at the service of the people of God. »

Here is now the rectification that announces our return to the pure air of the truth that had been offended:

« Nevertheless, they can only render service by exercising the powers that they have received. These powers cannot, then, be effaced. “Bishops… govern the Churches by means of their authority and sacred power [...] to lay down laws for their subjects, to judge and organise all that pertains to the good order of sacred worship and the apostolate.” »

The conclusion is truly reactionary:

« The respect for persons is put forward? All right, but bishops cannot neglect the common good, for all that, by allowing indiscipline and anarchy to be established. » (Pour l’Église, t. 4, p. 36)

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

Nevertheless, Mgr Luciani saw no means of reconciling the conciliar Declaration on religious freedom with traditional teaching. He concluded from this that there was an « error » somewhere.

When our Father learned of this confidence, a confidence that manifested the turmoil of his conscience, he immediately showed its immeasurable significance:

« Between John Paul I and ourselves, between the legacy of John and Paul, which he had professedly espoused, and our League of the Counter-Reformation, there remained an insurmountable contradiction regarding precise, significant points of the Faith. We could not, and shall never be able to, accept as a new dogma the alleged social right of Man to religious liberty [...]. Consequently, we had been told for fifteen years, both in France and in Rome, that we were pursuing a dead end.

« Now, by a simple word of honesty and humility John Paul I has opened the way to an outcome [...]. Admitting his interior struggle and the difficulty he had in rallying to the theses of the innovators, in particular to the theory of religious liberty, he had the honesty to say: “The most difficult thesis for me to accept was that of religious liberty. For years I had taught the thesis that I had learned in Cardinal Ottaviani’s course on public law, according to which truth alone has rights. I studied the problem thoroughly, and finally I became convinced that we had been mistaken.” » (CCR no 103, October 1978, p. 5)

« In one go, our Father commented, the Pope’s honesty restored everyone’s right to be heard [...], and he restored the present drama to its true proportions. It is this: some ended by allowing themselves to be convinced or else they managed to convince themselves that the Church had hitherto been wrong [until Vatican II]; others remained convinced, or in the end understood, that the ones who had been mistaken and deceived us were the innovators of this Council rather than the Church of all time. To admit the possibility of error, whichever side the mistake actually lies on, is to restore peace to the Church by relegating these difficult questions to the domain of free opinion pending a dogmatic Vatican III or the Pope’s infallible definitions. »

In 1974, when a referendum was held to obtain the abrogation of the Italian law authorising divorce, progressivist priests rejected their patriarch’s directives:

« The major cause they defend, Cardinal Luciani noted, is civil liberty in religious matters affirmed by the Council. Yet, it is advisable to read the declaration on religious liberty entirely. »

This is an allusion to the limits and restrictions that had been added in § 7 of this Declaration.

But since he had accepted the very principle of religious freedom, the prelate found himself in a position of inferiority for effectively defending the law of God and the Church in the face of protestors.

At the same time, as regards this § 7, our Father wrote in his analysis of the conciliar Declaration on Religious Freedom (CRC n° 57, p. 8) that the limits theoretically imposed out of respect for the rights and liberties of others, are inoperative because the Council leaves everyone the task of reciting them and imposing them on himself!

It is even clearer in the auto-da-fe.

REFORM OF THE CHURCH: IN CAPITE ET IN MEMBRIS.

Mgr Luciani often explained how he had personally interpreted aggiornamento, i.e., the reform that John XXIII decreed at the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Truths cannot change, he said. What can and must change is our own conduct. We must proceed with our own aggiornamento. Therefore, he wrote to his priests:

« The first reform to perform is our own inner reform. We must begin it at once. It is of little use to have implemented external reforms, commissions and organs of government, if men remain as they are... if the spirit of prayer is not fed and if charity makes no progress. »

« Such was, the Abbé de Nantes commented, the thinking of all the holy reformers in the past, just as it was of a Pius X or a Pius XII, namely to reform oneself first the better to conform to the Church’s ideal of truth and holiness. » (CCR n° 107, p. 13)

Don Luciani had personal ideas concerning the reform of the clergy, which he had acquired by studying Rosmini; he had presented a thesis on Rosmini for his doctorate in theology.

« Rosmini, the Abbé de Nantes wrote, left a considerable body of work in every field, a body of work where the best is found with the worst, where the boldest and most interesting projects for the renewal of social and ecclesiastical institutions are found side by side with the most dangerous utopian ideas and even several marked heresies.

« Don Luciani made allowances and retained only the best. And so he adopted Rosmini’s ideas for evangelical reform and for a much greater simplicity and true poverty within the Church. »

This affirmation is corroborated by his notes. We can see, for example, how he learned a lesson from Mgr Franic’s intervention in the conciliar aula:

« Today among other things, Mgr Franic said: “Dear Council Fathers, let us think of becoming saints ourselves. I have the impression that those who resemble Augustine, Charles Borromeo and Francis de Sales have become rare among us. We are hardly conspicuous by our poverty. The Lord as well as the faithful wish their bishops to be poorer.” I quickly examined my conscience. It seemed to me that I was already poor, but I can still remove certain things from my private life. »

All the testimonies coincide on this matter, for example, those of his two secretaries, one of whom succeeded the other in serving Don Luciani at Vittorio Veneto:

« Mgr Luciani possessed nothing. He did not have a bank account. When he had money left, he gave it to the poor. »

Once at a Christmas Eve dinner, he refused the festive meal that had been prepared for him. « Please, take it to this poor family that we know. Give me the leftover soup from yesterday evening.

– Excellency, it is cold.

– You want to take me in by my fondness of good food! Bring me that soup. I must set a good example of love of the poor, as I have just taught in my preaching, by practising poverty myself in order to imitate Jesus. »

When he was appointed Patriarch of Venice in 1969, Mgr Luciani surprised and shocked the aristocratic society of the city by his poor, penitential way of life. The editor-in-chief of a Venetian daily expressed the unforgettable impression the Patriarch made on him at their first encounter:

« He was wearing a threadbare cassock with a patch on the left sleeve. It was impossible not to notice his big country shoes. As he saw that I was observing him, he told me that it was not easy for him to change his habits as a priest from the mountainous back country. Then, he began to speak to me about the valleys, the mountain parishes where people are so poor that they only eat polenta. He then added that we “should all draw closer to the poor”. »

As for his secretary, Don Mario Senigaglia, he was one day caught unawares by this Gospel scene:

« One day, soon after his arrival at Venice, Don Mario related, when Mgr Luciani left his office, he smelt the odd odour of the immense flood of people that was invading the waiting room. He asked me:

“Who are they?

– They are poor people.”

« He wanted to come and greet them; I introduced them to him one by one. They were perhaps seventy in number. Then, he said to them:

“I advise you to make use of the Patriarch’s door, it is always open. Ask Don Mario, and he will willingly do whatever he can for you.

– Excellency, I mumbled to him between my teeth, you are going to ruin me; they will stick to me.”

« But, smiling, he answered me:

– Someone will help us.”

« The poor, delinquents, alcoholics, ex-prisoners, ex-prostitutes, tramps... became his friends [...]. No one left him with empty hands [...]. For many of them, we found a house and a job. »

This good shepherd always accompanied his charitable gifts with a wise piece of advice or supernatural words. When he would pick up a hitch-hiker, he would quip to him: « Take care, I am not giving you a lift for nothing. You will say an Ave Maria so that I may go to Heaven. »

The cardinal experienced acerbic criticism from the leftist minority of his clergy because his doctrine and his social works were not in keeping with their perspective of class warfare.

Admittedly, the Patriarch did not hesitate to remind employers of their duties, as can be seem in his pastoral Letters:

« When I went to the Synod, I took with me, do not smile, the little, old catechism [that of St. Pius X], which my mother had me recite every evening. In paragraph 25, “oppression of the poor and frauds committed on salaries owed to workers” are mentioned among the “four sins that cry out for vengeance before God’s face”. »

But his defence of poor people from capitalist oppression differed radically from that of the progressivists because it was not linked to any travesty of dogma. The specifically supernatural work operated under the form of the sacred ministry, remained essential and primordial for him:

« If we only preach social liberation, he said, in our preaching, God will be but a pretext, a kind of runway to take-off into the socio-political heavens, where the Lord is absolutely nowhere to be found. True evangelisation requires just the contrary. If we use religious and purely religious discourse in the Church, we will have efficient and beneficial repercussions in the social realm. »

MARTYR FOR AND BECAUSE OF HIS BRETHREN

In the post-conciliar upheaval of the years around 1965, Mgr Luciani warned his clergy against the errors that were abounding on the pretext of making all things new: « One does not judge ideas on the basis of their age but on their truth. »

His Letter to priests, of 8 September 1967, would later on be called the Little Syllabus. The prelate noticed a new upsurge of Modernism: « The young generations have allowed themselves to be fascinated by an alleged radical demythologisation that goes so far as to deny all dogma, or by a partial “demythologisation” of the Bible, approximates the position already held by the Modernists. »

After having reminded his readers of the unquestionably historical character of the Gospels, the bishop vigorously found fault with those who « tend to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ [...], to refrain from proclaiming it before the believers of other religions or unbelievers. »

Moreover, this good shepherd put his priests on guard against « exalting the individual’s charisms at the expense of the charisms of the hierarchy, having a low regard for the Magisterium of the Sovereign Pontiff, glorifying human autonomy, denying the existence of angels, forgetting the presence of the Devil, errors concerning original sin, the Eucharist, the new situation ethics; the all too frequent silence concerning the last Things », i.e., Heaven and Hell.

Mgr Luciani became alarmed about the spread of « religious ignorance... One gets used to teaching catechism in any manner whatever, he said with anger. On the pretext of using a new-style of language [...], one ends up drastically amputating and changing the content of the Faith. »

He, who had first been favourable towards modern methods of teaching, was now recalling the irreplaceable value of the traditional catechism:

« A formula that is understood and learned by heart is like a coat rack on which the most important religious knowledge remains hanging despite the years that elapse. At secondary school or at university, certain chemistry or algebra formulas are learned by heart, or in law, certain fundamental articles of the law. Now, are there more important laws than religious truths and moral precepts? Formulas, it is said, are dry. A match also seems to be dry but when it is struck, a flame appears suddenly.

« Here in Venetia, we have the case of St. Bertilla Boscardin, who to all intents and purposes only knew the catechism in the form of questions and answers. It was her Parish Priest who had given her the Catechism of St. Pius X when she was a child; she took it with her to the convent; she continually read and reread it. It was found in the pocket of her dress after her death. It was completely worn-out, but the saint had drawn an ardent holiness from these seemingly dry formulas. »

« The duty that I have to accomplish, he observed in 1975, is becoming more and more difficult, more painful and less understood. I am told: “Don’t you think that there are very few now who accept directives from the episcopate?” I can see that very well; the battles of a poor bishop today are often like those of Don Quixote tilting against windmills.

« I mention Don Quixote in order to avoid over-dramatising. Others will say that, when bishops preach, they are at times rather like John the Baptist addressing Herod [...].

« Brethren, I repeat: Today each of us only keeps the Faith to the extent that he defends it, to the extent that he remains firm, courageous and determined, in imitation of the first martyrs. » (John Paul I, The Pope of the Secret)

Progressivist priests rebelled against the patriarch and tried every possible means to bring him down. They went so far as to approach the Vatican in order to obtain his dismissal from office.

Our good shepherd, one of his friends wrote, strove to conceal his pain with a smile: « He used to say: “It is enough for me to know that God is satisfied with me. I must minimise what I think I am; I must pay no heed to what others say about me, but the only thing that should matter to me is what God thinks about me”. »

Since Cardinal Felici was aware of all that his friend was suffering and enduring in Venice, he offered him a small Way of the Cross and repeated this gesture at the Conclave that raised him to the sovereign pontificate.

In one of his homilies, Cardinal Luciani called to the minds of the members of his diocese that Pope St. Pius X had underscored this sentence in Cardinal Pie’s work: « The history of the Church is a continual Calvary. »

John Paul I himself would prove it by fulfilling the vision of the “Third Secret”, which depicts a procession of Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people, men and women of different ranks and positions who are climbing a steep mountain, at the top of which there is « a large Cross ».

In fact, a month had hardly passed by when the confrontation took a dramatic turn at the Vatican. Cardinal Baggio and other prelates of the Curia resisted the Pope by disputing his choices and decisions regarding the nominations of several bishops to diocesan sees.

Furthermore, the Holy Father was preparing to take the necessary steps to put an end to Mgr Paul Marcinkus’ financial wrongdoings and frauds. Paul VI had placed Mgr Marcinkus at the head of the Vatican Bank, and he was assisted or financed by Milanese and Sicilian Mafiosi, as well as by swindlers of the P 2 lodge, among whom was its Grand Master, Licio Gelli.

On 28 September 1978, John Paul I launched his “regal blow”. He immediately dismissed Mgr Marcinkus and appointed Cardinal Baggio Patriarch of Venice in order to banish him from Rome. Finally, he informed Cardinal Villot, the Secretary of State, that he had to yield his place to Cardinal Benelli.

The next day, at exactly 5.00 am, a Vatican car was at the door of the Signoracci brothers, the Roman embalmers... The car had thus left the Vatican to fetch them even before the Pope was found dead in his bathroom.

This fact is part of a set of clues and bits of evidence that prove that John Paul I was assassinated by poisoning, as one can read in CCR n° 172. In that issue the Abbé de Nantes reviewed the enquiry conducted by an experienced investigator, David Yallop. His astounding revelations, which are verifiable on a thousand points, have been confirmed by subsequent events!

Moreover, they are paradoxically strengthened by the flimsiness of the counter-theses that the Vatican put forward. (John Paul I, The Pope of the Secret)

CONCLUSION
POVERTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD

During the worst times of Paul VI’s pontificate, as we saw last year, the Abbé de Nantes kept faith in the future of the Church. Cardinal Luciani’s elevation to the See of Peter fulfilled his wishes beyond his expectations: « We could not imagine that men endowed with such qualities, men of such holiness still existed among the Princes of the Church. »

Thus, despite the Second Vatican Council’s errors, schisms, and scandals, holiness still subsisted in the Church, and not only in the camp of the declared opponents of the conciliar reforms. Pure, submissive souls remained unscathed by heresy and schism, despite the fact that they had rallied – out of innocent obedience – to the new doctrines that they wanted to comprehend in a traditional Catholic sense. Our Father pointed this out to me one day as regards Sister Lucy: in His wisdom God could allow that one of His inspired children be misled without any offence to Himself, in order that the mass of the faithful who follow the Pope without any real understanding may be excused for allowing themselves to be misled. He gave me the example of Albino Luciani who accepted religious liberty. That was before the disclosure of the Secret. What a premonition (cf. CCR n° 332 p. 20)!

The Abbé de Nantes drew another lesson from John Paul I’s pontificate when the exact proofs and circumstances of his assassination were known: « This idolatry of Money, which has become the essential blot on our modern world, has succeeded in corrupting everything, now that it holds sway in the House of God. » Albino Luciani had « taken stock of this plague of international capitalism, this immense anonymous and vagabond fortune so ruinous for families, Christian institutions and States, and he had understood that this was the deepest evil afflicting our modern society. Thereafter, in all that concerned him, it was this evil that he attacked [...].

« Once elected Pope, he would reform the Church to bring back the poverty of the Gospel, in reality as well as in the heart. Beginning with Rome, and in Rome with the Vatican, and in the Vatican with its bank. It is because he vigorously undertook this difficult and dangerous cleansing operation that he died.

« I shall no longer say with Dostoyevsky: beauty will save the world. Nor will I say with Maurras: monarchy will save the world. Nor shall I even say, as I have myself so often thought and repeated: faith will save the world. Now I see in the sweet light of the first martyr pope of the modern capitalist era: it is through Poverty that a purified Roman Church will save the world. » (CCR n° 172, August 1984)

Finally, the publication of the Third Secret of Fatima in 2000 taught us that John Paul I, martyr for and because of his brethren, was the Pope of the Secret. Determined to carry out the consecration of Russia « according to the indications the Blessed Virgin had given to Lucy », he entered into this divine plan with the docility of a child.

This is why this holy Pontiff appears to us as the figure who announces the Pope of our expectations. He will have a poor man’s soul and enough devotion and interior humility to satisfy the demands of Our Lady of Fatima in an act of obedience and filial love towards Her Immaculate Heart.

Let us pray for the Holy Father!

The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 21st century
www.crc-internet.org