Part Two
Our moral and political world is undermined with passages, cellars, and sewers.
Goethe.
Goethe.
The pontificate of Pius XII (1939-58) found the Church in a highly flourishing condition. It was exerting its legitimate effect upon the Western world. More and more people were acquiring a fuller realisation, or at least a glimmering, of the Catholic ideal. In England an average of ten thousand people yearly, and in the United States some seventy thousand in one year alone, were said to have ‘gone over’ to Rome; and these converts included not a few who could be classified as prominent in various walks of life.
Entire houses of Anglican religious, who had favoured High Church practices, sometimes followed suit. The record number of those training to be priests and nuns promised well for the Church’s future. The tide of opposition, resulting from the Reformation was on the turn. The signs of Catholic revival were spreading throughout a most unexpected quarter – the English speaking world.
Those things, strangely enough, coincided with the rise of Communism, and the widespread collapse of moral and social values that followed the 1939 war. During that war, which left Communism in the ascendant, the Vatican had been one of the few completely neutral centres in the world, which caused it to be adversely criticised by Communists who interpreted that attitude as latent partisanship for the other side; and that criticism was strengthened when the Pope passed sentence of excommunication on Catholics who joined, or in any way aided, the Communist Party.
This was an extension of the warning conveyed by the previous Pope, Pius XI, in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno: ‘No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a Socialist properly so-called.’
Those words had doubtless been written with an eye on continental rather than English-speaking exponents of democracy. But they nonetheless implied condemnation, not only of revolutionary principles, but also of the milder forms of political expression that, when put to the test, encourage subversion.
There it was. The dividing line between Rome and her enemies had been firmly drawn. Both sides had issued their challenge and flourished their blazon. One was inspired by a Messianic though non-religious fervour that promised better things once the existing form of society had been dissolved; the other, secure in its reliance on a supernatural promise which meant that it would not, could not, compromise.
2.
The bishop in question was Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli. Born in 1881, and ordained in 1904, he soon attracted the notice of the Vatican, as a Doctor of Theology and a Professor of Ecclesiastical history. In 1921 he was assigned to the Congregation of Propaganda, and after being consecrated Bishop, in 1935, he entered the diplomatic service of the Church.
His first appointments were in the Balkan, a part of the world that was far from being favourably disposed towards any Catholic influence, as Roncalli discovered. As Apostolic Visitor, or Chargé d’affaires of the Holy See at Sofia, he became involved in diplomatic difficulties with the King, and these took on a more petty, but personal aspect when in 1935, he was transferred as Apostolic Delegate to Istanbul.
There the current fervour for modernisation, under Mustafa Kemal, was in full swing. Some of his laws came down heavily on religion, Islamic as well as Christian, and the wearing of any kind of clerical garb in public was strictly forbidden. The use of ecclesiastical titles was also proscribed.
Roncalli was made to feel that he was in a kind of straitjacket, never really free but watched and spied on, and his moves reported. Any contacts he might have developed were few and far between, and his invariable habit, and the end of the day, was to go home quietly, a foreign and anonymous passer-by.
One evening he felt unusually tired, and without undressing or putting out the light, he flung himself on the bed. On the walls were reminders of his earlier life, the photographs of relatives, and of the village on the Lombardy plain where they had grown up together. He closed his eyes and murmured his usual prayers. In a kind of vision he saw the faces of people, those he had heedlessly passed on the street that day, float out of a mist before him. Among them was the face of an old man with white hair and an olive skin that gave him an almost oriental look.
What followed may have been a dream, or so it appeared to have been, when daylight came. But in the quiet room Roncalli distinctly heard the old man ask: ‘Do you recognize me?’ And without knowing what prompted him Roncalli answered: ‘I do, always.’
His visitor went on: ‘I came because you called me. You are on the way, though you still have much to learn. But are you ready?’
Roncalli never experienced the slightest doubt. It had all been prepared for him. He said: ‘I wait for you Master.’
The old man smiled and asked three times if Roncalli would recognized him again; and Roncalli answered three time, that he would.
Even the coming of morning did not make the experience seem unusual. It would, Roncalli knew, be repeated, in a way that would give it no ordinary meaning.
He knew that time had come when he found the same old man waiting outside his lodgings; and he also felt that a more familiar situation had developed, which caused Roncalli to ask if he would join him at table.
The old man shook his head. ‘It is another table we must dine tonight.’ So saying he set off, with Roncalli following, into a quarter of quiet dark streets that the latter had never entered. A narrow opening led to a door at which Roncalli stopped, as if by instinct, while the old man told him to go up and wait for him.
Beyond the entrance was a short staircase, and then another. There was no light but in the almost total darkness there seemed to be voices from above, directing Roncalli’s footsteps to go on. He was brought to a stop by a door, smaller than the others, which was slightly ajar, and Roncalli, pushing that open found himself in a wide room, pentagonal in shape, with bare walls and two large windows that were closed.
There was a big cedar wood table in the centre, shaped like the room. Against the walls were three chairs one holding a linen tunic, three sealed envelopes, and some coloured girdles. On the tables was a silver-hilted sword, the blade of which, in the partial light made by three red candles in a three-branched candelabra, appeared to be flaming. Three other candles in a second branched holder had not been lighted. There was a censer about which were tied coloured ribbons, and three artificial roses, made of flimsy material, and with their stalks crossing each other.
Near the sword and the censer was an open bible, and a quick glance was enough to show that it was open at the Gospel of St. John, telling the mission of John the Baptist, passages which had always held a peculiar fascination for Roncalli. ‘A man appeared from God whose name was John…’ The name John acquires a special significance in secret societies, who make a point of meeting on December 27th, the feast of the Evangelist, and on June 24th, feast day of the Baptist. They frequently refer to the Holy Saints John.
Roncalli heard light footsteps behind him and turned from the table. It was someone he was to hear addressed, as Roncalli had called him, the master. He was wearing a long linen tunic that reached to the ground, and a chain of knots, from which hung various silver symbols, about his neck. He put a white-gloved hand on Roncalli’s shoulder. ‘Kneel down, on your right knee.’
While Roncalli was still kneeling the Master took one of the sealed envelopes from the chair. He opened it so that Roncalli was able to see that it contained a sheet of blue paper on which was written a set of rules. Taking and opening a second envelope the Master passed a similar sheet to Roncalli who, standing by them, saw it was inscribed with seven questions.
‘Do you feel you can answer them?’ asked the Master.
Roncalli said that he did, and returned the paper.
The Master used it to light one of the candles in the second holder. ‘These lights are for the Masters of the Past1 who are here among us’, he explained.
He then recited the mysteries of the Order in words that seemed to pass into and through Roncalli’s mind without remaining there; yet he somehow felt they had always been part of his consciousness. The master then bent over him. ‘We are known to each other by the names we choose for ourselves. With that name each of us seals his liberty and his scheme of work, and so makes a new link in the chain. What will your name be?’
The answer was ready. There was no hesitation.
‘Johannes’, said the disciple. Always ready to his mind, was his favourite Gospel.
The Master took up the sword, approached Roncalli, and placed the tip of the blade upon his head; and with its touch something that Roncalli could only liken to exquisite amazement, new and irrepressible, flowed into every part of his being. The Master sensed his wonder.
‘What you feel at this moment, Johannes, many others have felt before you; myself, the Masters of the Past, and other brethren throughout the world. You think of it as light, but it has no name.’
They exchanged brotherly greetings, and the Master kissed the other seven times. Then he spoke in whispers, making Roncalli aware of the signs, gestures that have to be performed, and rites to be carried out daily, at precise moments, which correspond to certain stages in the passage of the sun.
‘Exactly at those points, three times each day, our brethren all over the world are repeating the same phrases and making the same gestures. Their strength is very great, and it stretches far. Day after day its effects are felt upon humanity.’
The Master took the remaining sealed envelope, opened it, and read the contents to Johannes. They concerned the formula of the oath, with a solemn undertaking not to reveal the Order’s secrets, and to promise to work always for good, and most important of all, to respect the law of God and His ministers (a somewhat ambiguous stipulation in view of what their surroundings implied.)
Johannes appended his name to the paper, together with a sign and a number that the Master showed him. That confirmed his degree and entry into the Order; and once again a feeling of unearthly strength welled through his being.
The master took the paper, folded it seven times, and requested Johannes to place it on the point of the sword. Once again a sudden flame ran down the length of the blade. This was carried over to the candles that were still giving light ‘for the Masters of the Past’.
The flames consumed it, and the master scattered the ashes. He then reminded Johannes of the solemnity of the oath he had taken, and how it would convey a sense of freedom, real freedom, that was known in general to the brethren. He then kissed Johannes, who was too overcome to respond by word or gesture, and could only weep.
A few weeks later Johannes (or Roncalli, as we must again continue to call him) was told that he was now sufficiently versed in the Cult to figure in its next conclusive phase – that of entering the Temple.
The master prepared him for what, he never disguised from Roncalli, would be an ordeal; and Roncalli’s apprehension increased when he found that no one like himself, an initiate of only the first degree, was allowed to enter the Temple unless a task of great importance was about to be entrusted to him.
What could be ahead for Roncalli? Did the vision of a certain Chair, or throne, take shape in his mind as he made his way to the Temple?
There the brethren were assembled, another indication that Roncalli had been picked for some special mission. On the walls were the mysterious words, Azorth and Tetrammaton. The latter stands for the terrible, ineffable, and unpronounceable name of the creator of the universe, which was said to have been inscribed on the upper face of the cubicle, or foundation stone, in the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Jerusalem.
It figures in the pattern that is used for the evoking of evil spirits, or sometimes as a protection from them, a pattern that is known as the great magic circle is drawn between the two circles, which are composed of endless lines as symbolising eternity, various articles such as a crucifix, some herbs, and bowls of water, which is said to influence evil spirits, are placed.
Also in the temple was a cross, picked out in red and black, and the number 666, the number of the Beast in the Apocalypse. The Secret Societies, aware of the general ignorance regarding them, are now confident enough to show their hand. The American people are being made familiar with the mark of the beast on forms, brands of advertised goods, public notices: and is it mere coincidence that 666 is part of the code used in addressing letters to the British now serving (May 1982) in the South Atlantic (during the war with Argentina)? Those numbers, said to be all-powerful in the working of miracles and magic, are associated with the Solar God of Gnosticism.
The Gnostics, a Sect that flourished in the early Christian centuries, denied the divinity of Christ, disparaged revelation, and believed that all material things, including the body, were essentially evil. They held that salvation could only be achieved through knowledge (their name is derived from the Greek gnosis – knowledge). The Gospel stories they taught are allegories, the key to which is to be found in a proper understanding of Kneph, the sun god, who is represented as a serpent, and who is said to be the father of Osiris, and so the first emanation of the Supreme being, and the Christos of their Sect.
Roncalli, in his final and more elevated role for which the initiation prepared him, was to wear the image of the sun god surrounded by rays of glory, on his glove.
The colours red and black were held in reverence by the Gnostics and have been much in use by the diabolists. They are also the colours of Kali, the divine Mother of Hindu mythology; thus providing one of the several resemblances that occur between deviations from Christianity and pre-Christian cults. It may be noted that they figured on the banners of the International Anarchist Movement, whose prophet was Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), a pioneer of libertarianism as opposed to State socialism.
While Roncalli was noting the details of the room the brethren advanced from their places near the walls until they were drawing slowly and almost imperceptibly, closer, and closer to him. When they had formed a chain they pressed forward touching him with their bodies, as a sign that their strength, which had been tried and proven in earlier ceremonies, was being transmitted to him.
He suddenly realised that, without consciously framing them, he was being given words of power that streamed from him in a voice that he failed to recognise as his own. But he was able to see that everything he said was being written down by one who had been referred to as the Grand Chancellor of the Order. He wrote in French. On a sheet of blue paper that bore the heading ‘The knight and the Rose.’2
Judging by that and other signs, it would appear that Roncalli was affiliated with the Rose-Croix, the Rosicrucians, a society founded by Christian Rosenkreutz, a German, who was born in 1378. But according to its own claims, ‘The Order of the Rose and Cross has existed from time immemorial, and its mystic rites were practiced and its wisdom taught in Egypt, Eleusis, Samothrace, Persia, Chaldea, India, and in far, more distant lands, and thus were handed down to posterity the Secret Wisdom of the Ancient Ages.’
That its origin remains a mystery was emphasised by (Prime Minister) Disraeli, who said of the Society, in 1841, ‘Its hidden sources defy research.’
After travelling in Spain, Damascus and Arabia, where he was initiated into Arabian magic, Rosenkreutz returned to Germany and set up his fraternity of the Invisibles. In a building they designated as Domus Sancti Spiritus they followed such varied studies as the secrets of nature, alchemy, astrology, magnetism (or hypnotism as it is better known as), communication with the dead, and medicine.
Rosenkreutz is said to have died at the over-ripe age of 106, and when opened, his tomb which had been lost sight of for many years was found to contain signs and symbols of magic and occult manuscripts.
At first glance, Turkey may seem to be a country off the map, so far as the operations of a secret society are concerned. But in 1911, Max Heindel, founder of the Rosicrucian Fellowship and the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, wrote of that country in a manner that showed it was not escaping the observations of those who work with an eye on the religious, political, and social future. ‘Turkey’, he said, ‘has taken a long stride towards liberty under the Young Turks of the Grand orient.’
During the last few decades we have learnt much, that was previously hidden, about the rites, passwords, and practices of the secret societies. But there are few indications of the way in which they choose, from their mainly inactive rank and file, those who are looked upon as capable of furthering their designs. One of their simple instructions runs: ‘You must learn to govern men and dominate them, not by fear but by virtue, that is by observing the rules of the Order.’ But an occult writing, which appeared in New York, is rather more explicit: ‘Experiments are being made now, unknown oft to the subjects themselves … people in many civilised countries are under supervision, and a method of stimulation and intensification is being applied by which they will bring to the knowledge of the Great Ones themselves a mass of information that may serve as guide to the future of the race.’ This was accompanied by a pointed remark that was also a pledge for one who had been judged to be suitable: ‘You were long the object of our observation and our study.’3
3.
In the last days of December, 1944, Roncalli was preparing to leave Turkey for Paris, where he had been appointed Papal Nuncio to the Fourth French Republic. The war was still on, and the difference between Right and Left in politics, which had split France, was violently on the surface; and it became soon clear to observers whose judgement was not affected by ecclesiastical titles that Roncalli’s innate sympathies were with the Left.
It was on his recommendation that Jacques Maritain was made French Ambassador to the Holy See. Maritain was generally regarded as a world thinker, certainly as one of the most prominent Catholic philosophers. The full impact of his ‘integral humanism’ had so far been tempered by his Aquinian perspective. But later it was overcome by such contemptuous promulgations as that the social kingship of Christ had been good enough for medieval minds (and Maritain’s mentor, Thomas Aquinas, had been a medieval), but not for a people enlightened by such ‘instruments’ as the French and Bolshevist revolutions.
His status as a Catholic philosopher again causes doubt since, on his own testimony, he had been converted not by any spiritual urge, not by any theological or historical argument, but by the writings of Leon Bloy (1846-1917).
In spite of its flowing musical style, Bloy’s writing is hardly the sort of stuff to convert one to Christianity. He identified the Holy Ghost with Satan, and described himself as prophet of Lucifer, whom he pictured as seated on top of the world with his feet on the corners of the earth, controlling all human action, and exercising a fatherly rule over the swarm of hideous human offspring. Compared to this vision of an affable Lucifer, God is seen to be a relentless master whose work will end in final failure when Satan displaces Him as King.
According to his own confession, Bloy was converted to what he and his disciples called ‘christianity’ by the ravings of a poor prostitute who saw visions, and who after her affair with Bloy, died in a madhouse.
In 1947 Vincent Auriol was named President of the French Republic. He was an anti-Church plotter, one of those hardened anti-clericals who find a natural home on the continent; yet he and Roncalli became, not only cordial associates as their offices demanded, but close friends. This was not due to the Christian charity on one part and to diplomatic courtesy on the other, but to the ceremony that Roncalli had undergone in Istanbul, which established a bond of understanding between the two men.
This was given tangible expression when, in January 1953, Archbishop Roncalli was elevated to Cardinal and Aural insisted on exercising his traditional right, as the French head of State, to confer the red biretta on the newly created Prince of the Church. This occurred at a ceremony in the Elysée Palace when Roncalli, seated on the chair (loaned by the museum) on which Charles X been crowned, received the plaudits of men who had sworn to bring him and all he stood for into dust, a design in which Roncalli was secretly pledged, though by more devious methods to assist them.
Three days later he was transferred, as Patriarch to Venice; and during the five years he was there he again showed, as in Paris, a certain sympathy for Left-wing ideologies that sometimes puzzled the Italian press.
It was during the pontificate of Pius XII that a number of priests then working in the Vatican became aware that all was not well beneath the surface. For a strange kind of influence not to their liking was making itself felt, and this they traced to a group who had come into prominence as experts, advisers, and specialists, who surrounded the Pope so closely that he was spoken of, half humorously, as being their prisoner.
But those priests who were more seriously concerned set up a chain of investigation, both here and in America, where their spokesman was Father Eustace Eilers, a member of the Passionist Congregation of Birmingham, Alabama. This led to establishing the fact that the Illuminati were making themselves felt in Rome, by means of specially trained infiltrators who came from near the place in Germany where Adam Weishaupt had boasted of his plan to reduce the Vatican to a hollow shell. That the hand of the Illuminati was certainly involved became clearer when Fr. Eilers, who announced that he was publishing those facts, was suddenly found dead, presumably one of those sudden heart attacks that, when dealing with secret societies, so often precede promised revelations.
Pius XII died on October 9, 1958, and on the 29th of that month. Angelo Roncalli, after Cardinals in conclave had voted eleven times, became the two hundred and sixty-second pope of the Catholic Church. He was seventy-seven, but with a build well able to sustain the sixty pounds of ecclesiastical vestments with which he was weighed down for his coronation on November 4th, 1958.
4.
Roncalli’s ‘election’ was a signal for outbursts of welcome, often from the most unexpected quarters, to echo round the world. Non-Catholics, agnostics, and atheists agreed that the College of Cardinals had made an excellent choice, the best, in fact for many years. It lighted upon a man of wisdom, humility, and holiness, who would rid the church of superficial accretions and guide it back to the simplicity of Apostolic times; and last but not least among the advantages that promised well for the future, the new Pope was of peasant stock.
Seasoned Catholics could not account for the warmth and admiration that greeted him as journalists, correspondents, broadcasters, and television crews from almost every country in the world swarmed into Rome. For very little had hitherto been known to the outside world about Angelo Roncalli beyond the fact that he was born in 1881, had been Patriarch of Venice, and that he held diplomatic posts in Bulgaria, Turkey, and France. As for his humble background, there had been peasant popes before. The Church could absorb them as easily as it had her academic and aristocratic Pontiffs.
But the secular world, as evidenced by some of the most ‘popular’ publications in England, insisted that something momentous had happened in Rome, and that it was only the promise of still greater things to come; while informed Catholics, who for years had pleaded the Church’s cause, continued to scratch their heads and wonder. Had some information gone forth, not to them who had always supported religion, but to those who have served up snippets of truth, or no truth at all, to titillate and mislead the public?
An Irish priest who was in Rome at the time said of the clamour for intimate details regarding Roncalli: ‘Newspapers, and radio, television, and magazines, simply could not get enough information about the background and career, the family and the doings of the new Holy Father. Day after day, from the close of the conclave to the coronation, from his first radio message to the opening of the Consistory, the remarks and the activities of the new Pope were dealt out in flamboyant detail for all the world to see.’4
Speculation was added to interest when it became known that the new Pope wished to be known as John XXIII. Was it in memory of his father, who was named John, or out of respect for John the Baptist? Or was it to emphasise his readiness to outface or even to shock the traditional outlook? John had been a favourite name for many Popes. But why retain the numbering?
For there had been an earlier John XXIII, an anti-pope, who was deposed in 1415. He has a tomb in the baptistry at Florence, and his portrait appeared in the Annuario Pontifico, the Church’s yearbook, until recent years. It has since been removed. We know nothing to his credit, for his only recorded achievement, if the word of such a precious reprobate as himself can be believed, was to have seduced more than two hundred women including his sister-in-law.
Meantime there was a general feeling abroad that the Church was approaching a break with the traditional past. It had always evinced a proud refusal to be influenced by its environment. It had been protected, as by some invisible armour, from the fashion of the time. But now it was showing a readiness to undergo a self-imposed reformation as dramatic as that which had been forced upon it in the sixteenth century. To some it was anticipated as a bringing up to date of Christian doctrine, a desirable and inevitable process of re-conversion, in which a deeper and ever expanding catholicity would replace the older and static Catholicism of the past.
Such a change was guardedly foreshadowed in an early statement by John XXIII when he said: ‘Through east and west there stirs a wind, as it was born of the spirit arousing the attention and hope in those who are adorned with the name of Christians.’
The words of ‘Good Pope John’ (how quickly he acquired that complimentary assessment) were not merely prophetic. For they spoke of changes in the once monumental Church that would be initiated by himself.
5.
American collectors of ecclesiastical mementoes would have noticed, soon after Pope John’s election, that certain objects were being offered for sale in some of their papers. They were described as copies of the personal cross chosen and sanctioned by John XXIII.
These crosses had nothing to do with the pectoral cross that is worn, suspended from the neck, by every Pontiff and Bishop as a sign of episcopal authority. They are made of gold, ornamented with precious stones, and each one contains a holy relic. Before wearing it the prelate says a prescribed prayer in memory of the Passion, and begs for grace to overcome the wiles of the Evil One throughout the day.
But the cross that was put before the American public, under Roncalli’s patronage, had very different associations. For its centre, instead of holding a representation of the crucified Figure, contained the all-seeing Eye of the Illuminati, enclosed in a triangle or pyramid; and these crosses, advertised in The Pilot and The Tablet, the diocesan papers of Brooklyn and of Boston, were, in keeping with the lack of dignity and reverence that was becoming proverbial, on sale at two hundred and fifty dollars each.
Those who understood the meaning of the mystic symbols, and how profoundly they affect us, again had their attention drawn to the sun-face that was depicted on John’s glove. It was reminiscent of the design used by pagan sun worshippers; while his gesture of extending a hand, with fingers spread over a congregation, could also be recognised as an invocation to the white moon, part of an esoteric code that has always claimed followers.
To those who think that such suggestions verge on the ridiculous, it need only be pointed out that thousands of sedate, bowler hatted businessmen have, in the course of furthering their careers, performed rituals and adopted symbols that make the above seem very tame indeed.
To people in general, however, the pyramid, without resigning one jot of its original significance, now passes as a thoroughly respectable and harmless sign. It is merely a decoration. But it is one that goes into general circulation whenever an American one dollar note changes hands.
For on the reverse side of the note is the secret Eye, enclosed in a pyramid, and the date 1776. There are also the words Annuit Coeptis, Novus Ordo Seclorum.
The date 1776 may indicate no more to the unsuspecting than that it was the year of the Declaration of American Independence, drawn up by Thomas Jefferson.
True enough. But what of the symbols, which also figure on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States – why choose them? And 1776 was also the year in which Adam Weishaupt founded his brotherhood. And Thomas Jefferson, like his fellow politician Benjamin Franklin, was an ardent Illuminist.
The words quoted above may be translated as meaning: ‘He (God) has approved of our undertaking, which has been crowned with success. A new order of the ages is born.’
It has been demonstrated, time and again, that the future of the world is in the hands not of mere politicians, but of those who have the power, occult allied to international financial power, to manipulate events according to their plans; and we of the present time have witnessed the coming of their new order in several departments of life, including the religious, political, and social. Before the current propaganda that emphasises the role of women became popular, the occult authority Oswald Wirth spoke of woman ‘not being afraid’ to adopt masculine rites and customs, and of how, when she has obtained her full power, men will comply with her directions. That process is being actively carried out before us.
The term ‘new’ is being propagated as though it necessarily implies a marked improvement in whatever has existed before. It attained political prominence in 1933, the year in which Roosevelt’s New Deal was instituted; and it was in that same year that the Illuminati insignia, with the words referring to the ‘new order of the ages’, appeared on the reverse side of the American dollar bill. Their enactment is now taking shape in the formation of a new One World Order in which, it is anticipated, different nations, races, cultures, and traditions will be absorbed to the point of eventually disappearing.
1. The Masters are said to be perfect beings, the masters of humanity, who have passed through a series of initiations to a state of higher consciousness.
2. A full account of Roncalli’s initiation is given in Les prophéties du pape Jean XXIII, by Pierre Carpi, the pseudonym of an Italian who may have entered the same Order as Roncalli. It was translated into French, but is now very hard to find (Jean-Claude Lattes, Alta Books, 1975).
3. Letters on Occult Meditation. By Alice. A. Bailey. She was the High Priestess of an occult school and was associated with the Society of Illuminati minds.
4. John XXIII, the Pope from the Fields, by Father Francis X. Murphy. (Herbert Jenkins, 1959.)
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Part Three
I am certain that when in the Council I pronounced the ritual words 'Exeunt Omnes' (everyone out), one who did not obey was the Devil. He is always there where confusion triumphs, to stir it up and take advantage of it.
Cardinal Pericle Felici, Secretary-General of the Council.
Cardinal Pericle Felici, Secretary-General of the Council.
With a truly amazing foresight that was born of confidence, the secret societies had long since made up their minds how they would bring about changes in the claims and character of the Catholic Church, and ultimately its downfall. More than a century ago they recognised that the policy of infiltration, by which their own men were entering the highest places in the ecclesiastical structure, had met with success; and now they could outline the nature of the next stage to be accomplished.
Speaking as one of the arch-plotters who was ‘in the know’, Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-72) said: ‘In our time humanity will forsake the Pope and have recourse to a General Council of the Church.’ Mazzini was not immune to the drama of the anticipated situation, and went on to speak of the ‘Papal Caesar’ being mourned as a victim for the sacrifice, and of an executed termination.
A similar note was struck by Pierre Virion who wrote in Mystere d’Iniquité: ‘There is a sacrifice in the offing which represents a solemn act of expiation.... The Papacy will fall. It will fall under the hallowed knife which will be prepared by the Fathers of the last Council.’
A former canon-lawyer, Roca, who had been unfrocked for heresy, was more explicit. ‘You must have a new dogma, a new religion, a new ministry, and new rituals that very closely resemble those of the surrendered Church.’ And Roca was not merely expressing a hope, but describing a process. ‘The divine cult directed by the liturgy, ceremonial, ritual and regulations of the Roman Catholic Church will shortly undergo transformation at an ecumenical Council.’
One evening early in 1959, when he had been Pope for scarcely three months, John XXIII was walking in the Vatican Gardens.
His slow and weighty perambulations under the oaks and horse chestnuts, where Pius IX had ridden on his white mule, were suddenly broken in upon by what he was to call an impulse of Divine Providence, a resolution that reached him from beyond, and whose impact he recognised. A Council – he almost breathed the words – he was to call a General Ecumenical Council of the Church.
Later he said that the idea had not been inspired by any revelation of the Holy Spirit but through a conversation he had with Cardinal Tardini, then Secretary of State, towards the end of the previous year. Their talk had turned on what could be done to present the world with an example of universal peace. But there was still some confusion as to the origin of the thought, for Pope John subsequently said that he framed it himself, in order to let a little fresh air into the Church.
Councils in the past had been called to resolve some crisis in the Church, some burning question that threatened a split or to confuse opinion. But no such question, related to doctrine or discipline, was pressing for an answer in the early part of 1959. The Church was exacting its traditional dues of loyalty, neglect, or antagonism. There appeared to be no need to summon a Council. Why cast a stone into peaceful waters that, sooner or later, were bound to be disturbed by obvious necessity? But Pope John, on January 25th, announced his intention to the College of Cardinals; and the response it evoked in the secular world soon made it clear that this was to be no ordinary Council.
The same measure of unexampled publicity that marked the election of John XXIII, welcomed the plan. It was made to appear a matter of moment not only to the non-Catholic world, but to elements that had always strongly opposed Papal claims, dogma, and practice. But few wondered at this sudden show of interest on the part of agnostics; still fewer would have suspected a hidden motive. And if a small voice expressing doubt managed to be heard, it was soon silenced as preparations for the first session of the Council went ahead.
They occupied two years, and consisted of the drawing up of drafts, or schemas, on decrees and constitutions that might be deemed worthy of change. Each member of the Council, which would consist of Bishops drawn from every part of the Catholic world, and presided over by the Pope or his legate, could vote for the acceptance, or rejection, of the matter discussed; and each was invited to send in a list of debatable subjects.
Some days before the Council opened, it appeared that the authorities responsible for it had been assured that this mainly Catholic affair would be given more than its usual share of normal publicity. A greatly enlarged Press office was set up facing St. Peter’s. Cardinal Cicognani officiated at its opening and gave it his blessing; and the gentlemen of the Press poured in.
They included a surprising number of atheistic Communists who arrived, like hunters, expecting to be ‘in’ at a kill. The Soviet Literary Gazette, which had never before been represented at any religious gathering, took the surprising step of sending a special correspondent in the person of a certain M. Mchedlov, who smoothed his way into Rome by expressing the most heart-felt admiration for the Pope. Two of Mchedlov’s fellow-countrymen were there, in the shape of a reporter from the Soviet newsagency Tass, and another from the Moscow periodical which was frankly named Communist. Another prominent member of the Bolshevik clan was M. Adjubei, who, besides being editor of Izvestia, was son-in-law to the Soviet Prime Minister, Khrushchev.
He was given a warm welcome by Good Pope John, who invited him to a special audience at the Vatican. News of this promising reception was sent to Khrushchev, who straightway noted his intention of sending greetings to the Pope on November 25th, 1963, his next birthday. An unknown number of Italians, when they recovered from their surprise at seeing the Head of the Church on friendly terms with its enemies, decided to cast their votes in favour of Communism at the next opportunity.
This resolve was strengthened when a special number of Propaganda, the organ of the Italian Communist Party, helped to swell the chorus of praise for the coming Council. Such an event, it said, would be comparable to the opening of the States General, the curtain raiser to the French Revolution, in 1789. With the same theme in mind, the paper likened the Bastille (which fell in that same year) to the Vatican, which was about to be shaken to its very foundations.
More Left-wing approval came from Jacques Mitterand, Master of the French Grand Orient, who knew that he could safely praise, in advance, Pope John and the effects of the Council in general.
Among the Russian Orthodox observers was the young Bishop Nikodim who, in spite of maintaining a strict religious standing, was apparently free to come and go through the Iron Curtain. Two other Bishops from his part of the world, one Czech and one Hungarian, joined him and Cardinal Tisserant at a secret meeting that was held at a place near Metz, shortly before the Council’s first session. Nikodim, a somewhat shady figure, needs to be remembered since he appears later in these pages.
We know now that the Russians dictated their own terms for ‘sitting in’ at the Council. They intended to use it as a means for broadening their influence in the Western world, where Communism had been condemned thirty-five times by Pius XI, and no less than 123 times by his successor Pius XII. Popes John and Paul VI were to follow suit, but each, as we shall see, with tongue in cheek. It was now Russian policy to see that the Bulls of Excommunication issued against Catholics who joined the Communist Party were silenced, and that no further attack on Marxism would be made at the Council. On both points the Kremlin was obeyed.
The Council, made up of 2,350 Bishops, sixty from Russian-controlled countries, opened on October the 11th, 1962.
They formed an impressive procession, with the greatest array of mitres seen in our time as their wearers passed through the bronze door of St. Peter’s; guardians of the Faith, protectors of tradition, on the march; assertive men, confident of their stand, and therefore capable of inspiring confidence, and opposition... Or so they were in appearance. Few who saw them could have guessed that many of those grave and reverend Fathers were, according to the rules of the Church whose vestments they wore, and at whose bidding they had come together, excommunicate and anathema. The mere suggestion would have been laughed at.
2.
With the preliminaries over, the Council members were free to question, discuss, and compare notes as they met at the various coffee bars that had been opened; and already a more sober and reflective mood, distinct from that with which many had greeted the calling of the Council, was passing over the assembly. In some cases it was near disillusionment. It was not only a matter of language, though many different ones were, of course, being spoken. But some of those present seemed to have had little grounding, not only in Latin, but in the essentials of their Faith. Their background was not that of the orthodox, traditional Catholic; and those who were part of that background, and who were familiar with the writings of Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre could detect, in the statements and even casual remarks made by all too many prelates, the equivocations and lack of authority habitual to men who are the products of modern thought.
More than that, some let it be known that they did not believe in Transubstantiation, and therefore not in the Mass. But they held firmly by Nietzsche’s pride in life, and the deification of human reason, while rejecting the idea of an Absolute, and the concept of creation.
One Bishop from Latin America expressed his bewilderment mildly by saying that many of his fellow prelates ‘appear to have lost their faith.’ Another was frankly horrified to discover that some to whom he had spoken, and who had but temporarily put aside their mitres, scorned any mention of the Trinity and the Virgin Birth. Their background owed nothing to the Thomist philosophy, and one veteran of the Curia, inured to the firmness of the Roman pavement, made short work of the Council Fathers by summing them up as ‘two thousand good-for-nothings’. There were some among the bitterly disillusioned who said they would merely put in a token appearance for a week or two, and then go home.
Representatives from the Middle East recalled a warning that had been uttered by Salah Bitah, the Premier of Syria, when first he heard that the Council was being called. He had reason to believe that the Council was nothing but an ‘international plot’. Others supported that definition by producing a book, which had been handed to them on landing at the airport, in which it was said that the Council was part of a plan to destroy the Church’s doctrine and practice, then, ultimately, the Institution itself.
The general tone of the Council was soon set, with the ‘good-for-nothings’, or progressives, as they came to be called, clamouring for modernisation and a revision of values within the Church, and a far less active, and much less vocal opposition, offered by their traditionalist, or orthodox, opponents. The difference between the two sides was stressed at the opening of the first session, when the progressives addressed their own particular message to the world, to ensure that the Council ‘started off on the right foot’.
Pope John followed that up by declaring that the ashes of St. Peter were thrilling in ‘mystic exaltation’ because of the Council. But not all his listeners, and certainly not the conservatives among them, were smiling. Perhaps they already sensed defeat as they looked at some of the Cardinals, Suenens, Lienart, Alfrink, and such prominent theologians as the Dominican Yves Congar, who contributed to French Left-wing papers; the ultra-liberal Schillebeeckx, also Dominican, and Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Nijmegen; and Marie-Dominique Chenu whose writings, as when he said that ‘Marx’s great analysis enriches both today and tomorrow with his current of thought’, had brought a frown to the forehead of Pius XII; all hot in pursuit of progress, and none too careful in the choice of weapons they used to attain it.
Another of those influential figures was Montini, Archbishop of Milan, who drew up and supervised the documents relating to the early stages of the Council. His reputation was increasing daily. He was obviously a man of the future.
The silence of the passive minority, a silence that admitted defeat at the outset, was communicated to Pope John, who put it down to the awe and solemnity inspired by the occasion.
3.
These pages will not attempt to summarise the day-to-day work of the Council. They will instead seek to point out how faithfully the Council fulfilled the purposes of those progressives, liberals, infiltrators (call them what you will), who had brought it into being; and the less efficient, less determined attitude of their opponents.
The former group, made up largely of German-speaking Bishops, had from the first been active behind the scenes. They had audiences with the Pope and discussed changes in the liturgy and other subjects they had in mind. They altered the rules of procedure to suit their policy, and ensured that the various commissions were made up of those who shared their outlook. They distorted, or suppressed, any issue that did not suit their purpose. They blocked the appointment of opponents to any position where their voices might be heard, discarded resolutions that did not please them, and took over the documents on which deliberations were based.
They were supported by the Press, which was, of course, controlled by the same power as that which added fuel to the flames of infiltration. Apart from that, the German Bishops financed their own news agency. And so, in reports that reached the public, the Left-wing Bishops were depicted as honest, brilliant, and men of towering intellect, whereas those in the opposite camp were stupid, feeble, stubborn, and out-of-date. The Left, moreover, had the might of the Vatican behind it, and a weekly newsletter, written by Montini, which set the tone of the way in which debatable issues would be resolved by the Council. His remarks on liturgical reform were popularised by the Press and welcomed by those who wished to see the Mass reduced to the level of a meal between friends.
On looking back at this time of day, one is forced to wonder at the negligence, or weakness, with which their traditional or orthodox opponents confronted moves that, to men of their profession, threatened the very purpose of their existence. They were not ignorant of what had been planned, and of what was then going on. They knew that a forceful Fifth Column, many of them mitred members of the hierarchy, were working for the downfall of the Western Church. But they did nothing beyond observing protocol, and overcoming whatever resentment they felt by an inbred obedience. It was almost as though (allowing that morality was on their side) they wished to exemplify the saying: ‘Good men are feeble and tired; it is the blackguards who are determined.’
A factor that helped to decide the situation was that of age. Most of the Council Fathers belonging to the old traditional school had passed their prime; and they now, like Cardinal Ottaviani, whose name had once been weighty in the Curia, counted for little more than an almost despised rearguard. An unconscious recognition of this was made by another of their number, the aged Bishop of Dakar, who shook his head over the dictatorial method by which the modernists, even in the preliminary stages of the Council, swept all before them. ‘It was’, he said, ‘organised by a master mind.’
For their part, the modernists were frankly contemptuous of everything mooted by the orthodox elements in the Council. When one of their propositions came up for tentative discussion, one ‘updated’ Council Father declared that those who put it forward ‘deserved to be shot to the moon.’ But even so the Russian observers, despite early signs that the Council was prepared to toe the Communist line, were not wholly satisfied, though John XXIII was praised for maintaining his independence, and for not becoming a cats-paw of the Right.
But the Tass correspondent regretted the presence of too many ‘obvious reactionaries’ in the assembly, a sentiment that was echoed by M. Mchedlov who added: ‘So far the die-hard conservatives have failed to carry the day. They have not succeeded in turning the Church into a tool of their reactionary propaganda.’
4.
Between the ending of the first session of the Council on the 1st of December 1962, and the opening of the second session on September the 29th of the following year, Pope John, after a protracted illness, breathed his last on the evening of Monday, June the 3rd, 1963; and every form of publicity, which over the past weeks had delivered a breath-by-breath account of the death-bed in Rome, again swung into action to extol a man who had faithfully served the purpose for which he had been given the occupancy of Peter’s Chair, and set in motion a series of events that were directed to fulfil, at the expense of the Church, a large part of the aims determined by secret societies over the centuries.
A prominent member of the conspiracy that had fostered John XXIII, the ex-doctor of Canon Law, Roca, commented drily: ‘The old Pope, having broken the silence and started the tradition of the great religious controversy, goes to his grave’; while a revealing tribute, which should open the eyes of anyone who still finds offence in the mention of a plot, was written by Charles Riandey, a sovereign Grand Master of secret societies, in his preface to a book by Yves Marsaudon1, State Minister of the Supreme Council of French secret societies: ‘To the memory of Angelo Roncalli, priest, Archbishop of Messamaris, Apostolic Nuncio in Paris, Cardinal of the Roman Church, Patriarch of Venice, Pope under the name of John XXIII, who has deigned to give us his benediction, his understanding, and his protection’ (my emphasis).
A second preface to the book was addressed to ‘his august continuer, His Holiness Pope Paul VI’.
Never before had the passing of a Pope, in the person of John XXIII, been so extensively covered. Tough reporters wept at the news. The fingers of sensation-hardened columnists fumbled over their typewriter keys. Only a very few, who knew what had happened in the dark room in Istanbul, stood with heads unbowed and with minds uncluttered by propaganda, reflecting that Angelo Roncalli had indeed, as the pious used to say, ‘gone to his reward’.
The question of his successor was never seriously in doubt. The calling of a conclave was little more than a formality. The same voices that had eulogised the Rosicrucian John XXIII now clamoured for Montini, Montini of Milan. Anglicans, who had no time for a Pope of any or of no policy whatever, agreed that Montini was the man.
He had, in fact, been prepared and coached for the office by Pope John, who created Montini his first Cardinal, whereas Pius XII had always withheld the red hat from one whom he knew to be pro-Communist. Montini had been the only non-resident Cardinal whom John invited to live in the Vatican, where they exchanged intimate and unofficial talks over the results they both anticipated from the Council; and Pope John packed the College of Cardinals to ensure that Montini, as his successor, would continue to promulgate the heretical decrees that they both favoured.
The most spirited protests against the election were made by Joaquin Saenz Arriaga, Doctor of Philosophy and of Canon Law, who scented danger in the fact that a large part of Montini’s support came from secular commentators who were not concerned with the welfare, but with the downfall of the Church. Some of his credentials and qualifications were said to have been exaggerated, or false.
However, the decision of a conclave, established by usage, could not be questioned; and Montini, who took the name of Paul VI, was elected on June the 23rd, 1963.
5.
Giovanni Battista Montini was one of those socialists who, although born in far from humble circumstances themselves, are quick to resent the slightest sign of privilege in others. He was born on September 26th, 1897, in Northern Italy, into a highly professional family (of likely Hebrew origin) that, more than a century before, had been accepted into the annals of Roman nobility.
His father, Giorgi Montini, a prominent Christian Democrat, in all probability belonged to a secret society, which would partly account for his son’s later commitment. Showing early signs of wishing to enter the Church, the young Giovanni was of such a delicate constitution that he was allowed to study at home instead of at a seminary, which left him free to develop social and political trends that were not those of a normally trained and disciplined servant of the Church.
By the time he entered upon his first regular appointment as a university chaplain in Rome he was an established man of the Left. But that did not prevent his steady and undoubted ability to rise in a conservative atmosphere, and he became acting Vatican Secretary of State under Pius XII.
Montini had long been an admirer of the works of the philosopher Jacques Maritain, whose system of ‘Integral Humanism’, with its rejection of authoritarian and dogmatic belief in favour of a worldwide fraternity which would include non-believers, had earned the approval of John XXIII. Man, according to Maritain, was essentially good, an outlook that made him less responsive to the vital distinction that exists between man-made secular forms of existence and the demands made by belief in the divine nature of Christ and of the Church.
Both Maritain and Montini rejected the traditionalist view of the Church as the one means of attaining true world unity. It might have appeared so in the past, but now a new world, more sensitive to and capable of solving social and economic problems, had come into existence. And Montini, whom Maritain regarded as his most influential disciple, spoke for all of their persuasion when he said: ‘Do not be concerned with church bells. What is necessary is that priests are able to hear the factory sirens, to understand the temples of technology where the modern world lives and thrives.’ There is a document the contents of which, so far as I know, have seldom if ever been made available to the public. It is dated September the 22nd, 1944, after having been reported on the previous August 28th, and based on information given on July 13th of the same year. It is now among the records of the Office of Strategic Services, which later became the Central Intelligence Office, the CIA.2
It is headed: ‘Togliatti and the Vatican make first direct contact’, and deals with the plans for social and economic revolutions that were being worked out between the Church and one of its most consistent enemies, the Communist Party.
Here it is quoted: ‘On July 10th, at the house of a Christian Democrat Minister, the acting Vatican Secretary of State, Monsignor Giovanni Montini, conferred with Togliatti, Communist Minister without Portfolio, in the Bonomi Government. Their conversation reviewed the grounds out of which have grown the understanding between the Christian Democratic and the Communist Parties.
‘Since his arrival in Italy, Togliatti had private meetings with politicians of the Christian Democratic Party. These contacts constituted the political background of Togliatti’s speech at the Teatro Brancaccio on Sunday, July 9th, and account for the warm reception the speech received from the Catholic Press.
‘Through leaders of the Christian Democratic Party, Togliatti was able to convey to the Vatican his impression of Stalin’s opinion on religious freedom, as now accepted by Communism, and of the democratic character of the agreement between Russia and the Allied nations. On the other hand, the Holy See reached Togliatti through the same means, and expressed its opinion regarding the future agreement with Soviet Russia on the matter of Communism in Italy, as well as in other nations.
‘The discussion between Monsignor Montini and Togliatti was the first direct contact between a high prelate of the Vatican and a leader of Communism. After having examined the situation, they acknowledged the practical possibility of a contingent alliance between Catholics and Communists in Italy, which should give the three parties (Christian Democrat, Socialist, and Communist) an absolute majority, thereby enabling them to dominate any political situation.
‘A tentative plan was drafted to form the basis on which an agreement between the Christian Democrat Party and the Communist and Socialist Parties could be made. They also drafted a plan of the fundamental lines along which a practical understanding between the Holy See and Russia, in their new relations, could be created.’
To sum up, Montini informed Togliatti that the Church’s antiCommunist stand should not be considered as something lasting, and that many in the Curia wished to enter into talks with the Kremlin.
These meetings with the enemy displeased Pius XII, who came to eye his Secretary of State with a growing disfavour; and Montini, for his part, searched for a chink in the Pope’s armour. He found one in the fact that Pius had secured lucrative posts for some of his nephews; and Montini played upon this evidence of Papal nepotism for all it was worth, much to the delight of his socialistic, anti-clerical comrades.
Pius responded by dismissing Montini from his confidential post, and sending him north as Archbishop of Milan. That office had previously been filled, as of right, by a Cardinal; but there was no red hat, until 1958, for Montini.
There he was free to make full play with his political sympathies, which came to shift more obviously to the Left. Some of his writings, which appeared in the diocesan paper, L’Italia, made some of his priests wary of their superior, and before long more than forty of them withdrew their subscriptions to the paper. But their disapproval meant little or nothing to Montini who, with Maritain in the background, had come upon a more active supporter of his ultra-liberal opinions.
This was Saul David Alinsky, a typical representative of the agitator type who affect to nurse a deep-seated grievance against the capitalistic circles in which they are always careful to move, and on whose bounty they flourish.
Montini was so impressed by Alinsky’s brand of revolutionary teaching – he was known as the Apostle of Permanent Revolution – that the two spent a fortnight together, discussing how best to bring the demands of the Church, and those of the Communist unions, into line with each other. It must be remarked that Alinsky was as singularly fortunate in his personal relations as he was in his financial backers. For at the end of their talks Montini declared that he was pleased to call himself one of Alinsky’s best friends; while Jacques Maritain, in a mood that revealed the softening up process that his philosophic outlook must have undergone, said that Alinsky was one of the ‘few really great men of the century.’
One of Alinsky’s rich backers – and this advocate of the class warfare had several, including such odd combinations as the Rockefeller foundation and the Presbyterian Church – was the millionaire Marshall Field. This latter contact had served as a further aid to strengthen Alinsky’s image in Montini’s eyes, since Marshall Field, who had published a Communist newspaper, sponsored various subversive movements, and had waltzed his way through two divorce courts and three matrimonial cases, had remained a faithful son of the Church – his bank balance saw to that – and was an intimate friend of Bishop Shiel of Chicago.
At the same time Montini established a relationship, at first merely business, that was to have far reaching effects throughout much of Italy, including the Vatican, in the not too distant future. In the course of dealing with the complicated financial affairs of the Church he encountered a shady character, Michele Sindona, who was running a tax consultant’s office (that at least was part of his many-sided operations) in Milan.
Sindona was a Sicilian, born in 1917, a product of the heterogeneous Jesuit training, who was studying law when British and American troops invaded the island during the second world war. Another scourge that the war enabled to renew itself in Sicily was the Mafia. Driven underground by Mussolini, it had since emerged, with its proverbially strong American support and an obliging hand provided by President Roosevelt who, like practically every one of the American presidents since the time of Washington (himself an Illuminatus) was an active supporter of secret society ramifications. One of Roosevelt’s several titles was Knight of Pythias, which proclaimed membership of a society based on the mythical pair of pagans, Damon and Pythias; while he was also a wearer of the red fez as one of the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.
Sindona thrived on the ugly conditions engendered by the Mafia and the war. He obtained a truck, and made a good living by peddling oddments and minor necessities to the troops. It is doubtful whether, as some say, he took part in lodging information against the Germans, and helping to sabotage their positions. But he soon became one with the gangster element surrounding the American army commanders, who made their rounds in a luxury car presented to them, in return for services rendered, by the Mafia.
Protected and patronised by the Allies, Sindona was soon at the head of a flourishing black market racket; and when the war ended, following the trail of those who had sharpened his appetite for money, he turned his back upon the indigent south and went to Milan, where he met an apt collaborator in the Archbishop.
Montini’s coming to power was marked by the arrival in Rome of people who fairly dismayed the more conventional lookers-on at Vatican ceremonial; and since the Roman nature is too sharp for simple hypocrisy, they more than sniffed disapproval of the pimpish publicity men, pseudo-artists of every type, out-of-conscience clerics, and miscellaneous hangers-on who flocked south and pitched their metaphorical tents under the shadow of St. Peter’s cupola.
Rome, Montini’s critics declared, was again being invaded by barbarians from the north. Others said it was the Mafia. They were not far wrong. For among the new arrivals was Michele Sindona, no longer trundling a barrow, but lolling in a shiny chauffeur-driven car and doubtless appraising the Papal and imperial monuments he passed with the eye of a businessman.
6.
Pope John, speaking for the Council he had called and referring to its purpose, had said: ‘Our greatest concern is that the sacred deposit of Catholic doctrine should be guarded.’ The Church must never depart ‘from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers.’
There was nothing strange or revolutionary in that. So much had been taken for granted from generation to generation. But as the Council got underway the Pope changed his tune, and spoke of the Church not being concerned with the study of old museums or symbols of thought from the past. ‘We live to advance. We must evermore move forward. The Christian life is not a collection of ancient customs’; and Pope Paul, not many hours after being elected, announced his intention of consolidating and implementing his predecessor’s Council, and in a way, as we shall see, that endorsed the second of Pope John’s statements.
So far as the general reader is concerned, the most outstanding result achieved by the Council was the changed relationship between atheistic Communism and the Church; and the fact that such a surprising turnabout was effected shows that Mazzini and his fellow conspirators had not miscalculated when, so many years before, they had pinned their hopes of fatally undermining the Church on a General Council. It also illustrates the methods employed by those who, however exalted their ecclesiastical titles, were first and foremost the endorsers of the secret revolutionary creed.
The schema on Communism was welcomed by the Polish Cardinal Wyszynsky, who had had personal experience of life behind the Iron Curtain. Six hundred Council Fathers supported him, and 460 signed a petition requesting that condemnation of the atheistic materialism, that was enslaving part of the world, should be renewed.
Yet when the Commission’s report on the Church in the modern world was made known, the substance of the petition was not referred to; and when those responsible for it pressed for an explanation, they were told that only two votes had been cast against Communism.
But what, asked some of the astonished and disappointed signatories, had happened to the much greater number who had favoured the petition? They were informed that the matter had not been brought to the notice of all the Council Fathers, since some 500 of them had gone to Florence, where celebrations in honour of Dante were being held.
Still not satisfied, those who had been so obviously outmanoeuvred pressed the Jesuit Robert Tucci, a prominent member of the appropriate Commission, for an explanation. Their suspicions were groundless, he told them. There had been no bargaining, no back-stairs intrigue. It could only mean that the petition had ‘run into a red light on the way’, and so had come to a standstill. Another explanation was that the intervention had not arrived within the prescribed time limit, and so had escaped notice.
The argument went on, with two of the Council Fathers declaring that they had personally delivered the signed intervention to the General Secretariat on time; and when that was proved to be correct, there was a climb-down on the part of those who had so far blocked the condemnation of Communism.
Archbishop Garonne of Toulouse was called in to square matters, and he admitted the timely arrival of the petition, together with negligence on the part of those who should have transmitted the matter to members of the Commission. Their failure to do so meant that the petition had not been examined. But there was more inconsistency even on the part of those who admitted error. The Archbishop said that 332 interventions had been handed in. Another quoted the number of 334, but that was also contradicted when it was announced that the total to arrive on time had been 297.
There was one more attempt on the part of those who wished the Church’s original condemnation of Communism to be reaffirmed. It figured as a request to check the names of the 450 prelates who had signed the petition. But that was turned down. The petition had been added to the collected documents relating to the case, and they were simply not available. So, as in all such matters, the traditionalists lost heart. Their cause flickered out and the modernists, confident as ever, remained in possession of the field.
Their victory, and that of the secret societies who manipulated the Council, had been pre-figured by Cardinal Frings, one of the German-speaking consortium, when he said that any attack on Communism would be stupid and absurd, sentiments that were echoed by the internationally controlled Press. And at the same time, as though to cast light on the far reaching surrender made by the Church to its enemy (which many people, a few years back, would have judged unthinkable), Josef Cardinal Beran, the exiled Archbishop of Prague who was then living in Rome, received a cutting from a Czecho-Slovakian paper.
In it, one of their political creed boasted that Communists had been able to infiltrate all the Commissions that were steering the course of the Council; a claim that was well borne out when tactics similar to those described were employed, with equal success, at every stage of the sittings.
A typical instance was during the debate on the Religious Orders. Right-wing speakers, who had previously made known their intention to speak, were not allowed the use of the microphone. But it was made available to their opponents of the Left whose names had only been handed in that morning. Those indignant at having been silenced pressed for an official investigation. It was denied them, whereupon they demanded to see the prelate who had acted as Moderator on the occasion, Cardinal Dopfner. But he was not available, having gone to Capri for a long weekend.
When they succeeded in gaining an interview the Cardinal apologised, and then coolly asked them to resign their right to speak. That was naturally turned down, whereupon the Cardinal promised to read aloud a summary of the speeches they had prepared. But those who gathered in the Council Hall could hardly recognise the versions they heard. They had been considerably shortened, their meaning was confused and, in some cases, falsified. Then, after the manner of their kind, the objectors gave up, defeated by their own lethargy – or was it by the shifts and persistence of those who had come to the Council with a set purpose and a pattern that was being repeated again and again throughout the sessions?
On a day late in October the attention of the Council was concentrated on a figure who rose to speak. He was Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, one of the ablest members of the Curia, who carried with him a sense of the great days of Pius XII, on which account he was respected by some, and feared or disliked by others. Some shrank from his glance, which, said his enemies, was due to his possessing the evil eye. His stare could indeed be disconcerting, since he had been born in the poverty-stricken Trastevere quarter, where an eye disease, which had raged unattended, had afflicted many, and now, at seventy odd years, he was nearly blind.
When he rose the progressives in the Council exchanged meaning looks. They knew what was coming. He was about to criticise the new form of the Mass, the work of Monsignor Annibale Bugnini (which we propose to look at a little more closely later). Acclaimed by the progressives, and deplored by the traditionalists as a fatal innovation, it had brought about a deeper rift within the Council than any other topic.
There was no doubt in anyone’s mind as to the side on which Ottaviani would be ranged, and his first words made that clear: ‘Are we seeking to stir up wonder, perhaps scandal, among the Christian people, by introducing changes in so venerable a rite, that has been approved by so many centuries, and is now so familiar? The rite of Holy Mass should not be treated as if it were a piece of cloth to be refashioned according to the whim of each generation...
The time limit for speakers was ten minutes. The finger of Cardinal Alfrink, who had charge of the proceedings, was on the warning bell. This speaker was over earnest, and what he had to say was displeasing to many. The ten minutes passed. The bell rang, and Cardinal Alfrink signalled to a technician who switched off the microphone. Ottaviani confirmed what had happened by tapping the instrument. Then, totally humiliated, he stumbled back to his seat, feeling with his hands and knocking against the woodwork as he went. There were those among the Council Fathers who sniggered. Others clapped.
These pages are not intended to be concerned with Papal authority. But it has to be dealt with, however briefly, as those who may still doubt the secret society involvement, and the degree of power with which I have invested it, may point to the fact that one of their most extreme claims, ‘The Papacy will fall’, has not been borne out. For the Papacy is still in existence.
In existence, yes. But it has yielded place to a spirit of collectivism that would never have been credited in the days when Peter and his successors, by virtue of the authority vested in Peter by Christ, were known to have been given supreme jurisdiction over the Church.
Even while the Council was still in session many of its members, led by the Bishop of Baltimore, were negating the doctrine of Papal infallibility which, by relating specifically to faith and morals, was much more restricted than many think; and similar moves elsewhere led to its replacement by a new and clumsy definition – the Episcopal Collegiality of the Bishops.
Such a delegation of authority has now come about. More responsibility has passed to the Bishops, and the general acceptance of such a change has been followed by a corresponding decline in the Papal monopoly of power.
That may be no more than a first step towards the fulfilment of the confident boast: ‘The Papacy will fall.’
7.
Annibale Bugnini, created Titular Archbishop of Dioclentiana by Paul VI in 1972, had every reason to be pleased. His life-long service to the Church in the field of liturgical studies and reform had been rewarded. He was now, as Secretary to the Commission for the implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, a key figure in the revolution which had been pending for the past thirteen years. Even before the opening of the Second Vatican Council he had been bidding fair to play a decisive part in the future of the Church, much of which hinged upon the Mass, for which he had compiled new rites and a new order ‘as a sign of further progress to come.’
His work entailed a reform of liturgical books and the transition from Latin to the vernacular, all to be achieved by easy stages that would not alarm the unsuspecting. The imposition of new and different rules was being accomplished so successfully that Cardinal Villot, one of their promulgators, could state that no fewer than a hundred and fifty changes were, after only twelve months, already in circulation; while as to the outdated stipulation that ‘the use of Latin will be kept in the Latin rites’, Mass was already being said in thirty-six dialects, in patois, even in a kind of everyday slang.
Bugnini had, in fact, with the approval of Paul VI, put into practice Luther’s programme, in which it had been recognised that ‘when the Mass is destroyed, the Papacy will have been toppled, for the Papacy leans on the Mass as on a rock.’ It was true that an orthodox opponent, Dietrich von Hildebrand, had called Bugnini ‘the evil spirit of liturgical reform.’ But no such consideration figured in the Archbishop’s mind as, on a day in 1975, he left a conference room where he had attended a meeting of one of the Commissions where he had a voice, and started to climb a staircase. Suddenly he stopped. His hands, which should have been carrying a brief case, were empty. The case, containing many of his papers, had been left in the conference room. Never one to hurry, for he was a heavy man and needed exercise, he now fairly ran back and cast his eye over the chairs and tables. The brief case was nowhere to be seen.
As soon as the meeting broke up, a Dominican friar had gone in to restore the room to order. He soon noticed the brief case, and had opened it in the hope of finding the name of its owner. He put aside the documents relating to the Commission, and had then come upon a folder that contained letters.
Sure enough, there was the name of the person to whom they had been sent, but – and the Dominican gasped – the mode of address was not to His Grace or to the Most Reverend Annibale Bugnini, Archbishop of Dioclentiana, but to Brother Bugnini, while the signatures and place of origin showed that they came from the dignitaries of secret societies in Rome.
Pope Paul VI who was, of course, tarred with the same brush as Bugnini, promptly took steps to prevent the scandal spreading, and to smooth over the dismay of those progressives who, innocent of guile, had no opinion other than that dictated by the media. Bugnini should have been removed, or at least taken to task. But he was, instead, for the sake of appearances, appointed Apostolic Pro Nuncio in Iran, a post where there was little or no call for diplomatic embellishment since the Shah’s government had no time for any Western religion, and where the priest who was unfortunate enough to be banished there, though only for a time, found his function as limited as his surroundings, which consisted of scanty furniture in two rooms in an otherwise empty house.
The unmasking of Bugnini was carried a step further when the Italian writer, Tito Casini, who was troubled over the changes in the Church, made it known in The Smoke of Satan, a novel that was published in April 1976. Then came the expected denials and evasions. A Vatican source declared that the reasons for Bugnini’s removal had to remain secret, though, it was admitted, the motives that prompted it had been ‘more than convincing’. Le Figaro issued a denial of any secret society connection on Bugnini’s behalf. The Catholic Information Office belied its title by professing total ignorance of the case. Archbishop Bugnini more than once denied any secret society affiliation. All of which appears very futile since the Italian Register reveals that he joined one of the societies on April the 23rd, 1963, and that his code name was Buan.
8.
On the 8th day of December, 1965, Pope Paul confronted the assembled Bishops, raised both arms high in the air, and announced: ‘In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, go in peace.’
The Second Vatican Council was over; and those who heard Pope Paul gave vent to the feelings of victory, or defeat, that had sprung up among them during the meetings.
The conservatives were resentful, indignant, and hinted of a counter-offensive that was never to be mounted. They agreed among themselves that the Church’s progress had been halted by a move that was both unwise and unnecessary. One of their spokesmen, Cardinal Siri, spoke of resistance. ‘We are not going to be bound by these decrees’; but the decrees were, in fact, implemented, as Pope Paul had promised, to the growing bewilderment of Catholics for whom the Church, now a prey to novelties and disorders, had lost its note of authority.
The liberals or progressives, secure in having brought the designs of the secret societies to a successful conclusion, were exultant. The Council, said the Swiss theologian Hans Kung, had more than fulfilled the dreams of the avant-garde. The entire world of religion was now permeated by its influence, and no member of the Council ‘would go back home as he had come’. ‘I myself’, he continued, ‘never expected so many bold and explicit statements from the Bishops on the Council floor.’
In a similar mood the Dominican Yves Congar, a life-long Left-winger, announced that past failures in the Church had been brought about by its being imbued with the spirit of Latin-Western culture. But that culture, he was glad to announce, had had its day.
The most extreme reformer, Cardinal Suenens, executed a mental war-dance of triumph. He looked back to the Council of Milan, held in 313, by which the Emperor Constantine gave complete toleration to Christians, and made their faith equal to what, until then, had been the official State religion. That decree had always been a landmark in Church history. But now the Belgian primate who was known to his fellow conspirators as Lesu, could throw all such epoch-making reminders overboard. He was on the winning side. He bid defiance to those who differed from him. ‘The age of Constantine is over!’ Moreover, he claimed he would be able to draw up an impressive list of theses that, having been taught in Rome yesterday, had been believed, but at which the Council Fathers had snapped their fingers.
These danger signs were recognised by Malachi Martin, formerly a Jesuit and Professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. ‘Well before the year 2,000’, he said, there will no longer be a religious institute recognisable as the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church of today... There will be no centralised control, no uniformity in teaching, no universality in practice of worship, prayer, sacrifice, and priesthood.’
Can one detect the first signs of this in the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission’s report published in March, 1982?
A more precise assessment of the post-Conciliar period than that made by Malachi Martin appeared in the American Flag Committee Newsletter, 1967. Commenting on the ‘most marked and rapid deterioration in the Vatican’s anti-Bolshevik resolve’ since the time of Pius XII, it goes on to say that in less than a decade the Church has been transformed ‘from an implacable foe of Communism into an active and quite powerful advocate of co-existence both with Moscow and Red China. At the same time, revolutionary changes in its centuries-long teachings have moved Rome closer and closer, not to traditional Protestantism as many Catholic laymen suppose, but to that humanistic neo-paganism of the National and World Council of Churches.’
But if the Council accomplished nothing else, it enabled the caterers to flourish. For some half-a-million cups of coffee were disposed of at the bars.
2. It was brought to my notice by Mr. Michael Gwynn of the Britons Library.
===========================
Part Four
The Devil has recovered his citizenship rights in the Republic of culture.
Giovanni Papini.
Giovanni Papini.
Publicity flared to its maximum coverage when it was announced, in the summer of 1965, that Pope Paul would visit New York later that year in order to address the United Nations Assembly. It was heralded as an event of the utmost importance that would surely bring results that could not be lost upon the world; but there was also some speculation as to why non-Catholic, and even antiCatholic quarters, were giving rise to much the same bursts of excitement that had marked the election of John XXIII.
Could it be that the same power was pulling wires, behind the scenes, to influence the tone of the Press, radio, and television? We have already assessed, to some extent, the character and the leanings of Paul VI. Let us now glance at the formation and the make-up of the United Nations.
It was primarily Communist in tone, its charter, signed in 1943, being based upon the Constitution of Soviet Russia, while its purpose and principles were decided at a conference of Foreign Ministers held in Moscow.
The secretaries of the United Nations’ Security Council, between the years 1946 and 1962, were Arkady Sobelov and Eugeny Kiselev, both Communists. A leading figure of the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was Vladimir Mailmovsky, Communist. The chief secretary for UNESCO was Madame Jegalova, Communist; while the President, Vice-President, and nine judges of the ‘World Court’ were all Communists.
Yet these were typical of the people on whom Paul VI lavished praise, and to whom he looked for the salvation of the world; while the Press and radio, subject to the same international control as the United Nations, continues to speak of that body as being worthy of respect.
Posing as strictly neutral, and with the declared intention of promoting world peace, it soon showed a definite bias in favour of Communist-inspired guerrilla movements whose object, in several parts of the world, was the overthrow of established governments. This was done under the guise of liberating people from oppression; but the ultimate design of the Assembly, then as now, was to set up a totalitarian system in which national sovereignty and cultures would disappear.
Incidental to this, as was made plain by the secondary social and economic organisations that sprang from the Assembly, would be a virtual censorship whose voice was predominantly atheist. For it had been noted that the more orthodox countries such as Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, were excluded from the Assembly’s original foundation; whereas Bolshevist Russia, from its permanent seat on the Security Council, possessed a veto that could reduce the decisions of the Assembly to a mere expression of words, without effect; a judgment that may fairly be passed on all the deliberations of the United Nations from the day of its founding to the present.
More concrete evidence for these strictures may be adduced when we look at the record of a professional criminal who came to occupy a leading place, by way of the United Nations, in European life. He was Meyer Genoch Moisevitch Vallakh, or Wallach, who, before the 1914 war, emerged from the stormy background of Russian political life as a ‘wanted’ figure who found it safer, and more rewarding, to extend his activities to countries that were, so far, less disturbed.
Working under a variety of names, including Buchmann, Maxim Harryson, Ludwig Nietz, David Mordecai, and Finkelstein, he came into the limelight in Paris in 1908, when he took a hand in robbing the Tiflis Bank of two hundred and fifty thousand roubles. He was deported, but soon afterwards was in trouble again for dealing in stolen banknotes.
His chance came in 1917, when the Russian Revolution brought him and his kind to the surface. Now, under the respectable pseudonym of Maxim Litvinoff, he became Soviet Commissioner for Foreign Affairs. His next step was to the Presidency of the Council of the League of Nations. He then arrived in London as Soviet ambassador to the Court of St. James, and as such became a familiar and influential figure in royal and diplomatic circles.
As further evidence of the downward slide in our public and political affairs, it may be noted that the first Secretary-General of the United Nations was Alger Hiss, who had been convicted of perjury in the American courts. He took a prominent part in shaping the United Nations’ Charter on Russian-Communist lines.
These considerations, however, did not weigh heavily with the faithful, who thought that the Pope’s address and appearance, before a world audience, would be a golden opportunity for the advancement of Papal teaching. It would burst upon the doubting and insecure world with a certainty that it had never before experienced. Many listeners, for the first time in their lives, would be brought face to face with the reality of religion. It was only the Church that had anything really important to say, that could add spiritual significance to the routine of daily life.
Some half-a-century before, Pius X had issued directions and indicated guide-lines that were everywhere and at all times relevant. But his audience had been as necessarily limited as his means to make himself heard. Now it was for Pope Paul to echo the words of his predecessor, but this time to an almost universal congregation that could be reached through the medium of the United Nations.
Pius had said: ‘There is no need for me to point out that the advent of world democracy can have no relevancy to the work of the Church in the world .... the reform of civilisation is essentially a religious task, for true civilisation presupposes a moral foundation, and there can be no morally based foundation without true religion .... this is a truth which can be demonstrated from the evidence of history.’
But Pope Paul had no intention of endorsing what Pius had said. For instead of a religious leader speaking on October 4th, 1965, it might have been a disciple of Jean Jacques Rousseau holding forth on the deification of human nature that, finding expression in the declaration of the Rights of Man on August 12th, 1789, ushered in the French Revolution.
The Rights of Man, that were enthusiastically defined as being vested in Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, led to the Cult of Man and man’s elevation in place of God; from which it followed that all religious forms, and institutions such as rulership, family life, and the holding of private property, were denigrated as being parts of the old order that was on the point of passing.
When the effects of the Second Vatican Council became apparent, Doctor Rudolf Gruber, Bishop of Regensburg, was led to observe that the main ideas of the French Revolution, ‘which represents an important element in Lucifer’s plan’, were being adopted in many spheres of Catholicism. And Pope Paul, speaking direct to a battery of microphones that carried to the world, gave ample evidence of this.
He made no reference to spiritual claims or the importance of religion. ‘Behold the day we have awaited for centuries.... This is the ideal that mankind has dreamt of in its journey through history.... We would venture to call it the world’s greatest hope.... It is your task here’, he told the members of the Assembly, ‘to proclaim the basic rights and duties of Man.... We are conscious that you are the interpreters of all that is permanent in human wisdom; we could almost say of its sacred character.’
Man had now come of age, and was qualified to live by a philosophic morality that, owing nothing to authority, was created by himself. The United Nations, destined to play the leading role in the world, was ‘the last hope of mankind’. So it was to secular structures that man must look for the stability and redemption of humanity; in a word, to himself; sentiments that would not have been out of place in the committee rooms of the French Revolution; sentiments that no one would have thought to hear expressed by a Pope, void as they were of any reference to the claims and traditional message of the Church.
That this was understood and appreciated was shown by the reception accorded him at the close of his address, by those of a certain political persuasion who made up by far the greater part of his live audience. He was surrounded by back-slapping and handshaking representatives of Russia, China, and the Soviet satellite States. He arranged for further meetings, which proved to be four in all, with the Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko (real name Katz), and his wife. There were congratulations from Nikolai Podgorny, member of the Politburo, and warm exchanges with Arthur Goldberg, a prominent member of the Communist Party.
Pope Paul had opened up the world of religion to its old and inveterate enemies, the champions of social reform who denied revelation. ‘Dialogue’ was now much in fashion, and the prospect of Moscow and the Vatican entering into talks was taken for granted. The world’s leading churchman had propagated the social gospel, so dear to the heart of revolutionaries, without a single reference to the religious doctrines that they found pernicious. Differences between the two sides were not so deep-seated and final as had once been thought. The Pope, and those who clustered about him sometimes with two-handed clasps, could henceforth be allies.
It now remained to round off a truly historic visit with an initiatory rite that would put the seal on this newly admitted realisation.
2.
‘Behold, thy King is coming to thee, humbly riding on an ass.’ So wrote St. Matthew (21.5) on Christ’s entry into Jerusalem.
But it was not thus that Christ’s representative rode along Broadway. Pope Paul travelled in a seven-passenger Lincoln convertible, through a forest of flags and bunting, with a police escort on motor cycles, and thousands more police lining the way and restraining crowds that were uncertain whether to stand, kneel, or bow their heads in expectation of a blessing, and whether to wave or raise an arm in salute; with two spotter helicopters buzzing and circling overhead, sirens blowing, and on nearly every building fluorescent lighting that unnecessarily vied with the daylight, and the United Nations’ Plaza Building spelling out ‘welcome, Pope Paul VI’.
This followed upon a question that Cardinal Vagnozzi, the Apostolic-delegate in New York, put to Pope Paul. What was to be the next goal of his visit?
The Meditation Room in the United Nations’ building, Paul told him.
The Cardinal was surprised, shocked. He had good reason for affirming that the Holy Father couldn’t go there.
But he went.
The room, with two others of its kind, one at Wainwright House, Stuyvesant Avenue, Rye, New York, and the other in the United States Capitol, represented the early stage of a scheme the fulfilment of which would be marked (in concrete form) by the erection of what was called the Temple of Understanding, on fifty acres of ground along the banks of the Potomac in Washington, D.C.
It was part of a design to form one inter-religious world body on the part of a certain Mrs. Judith Dickerman Hollister, who revealed an anti-traditional, pro-mysterious bias by becoming a Shinto. As such, she believed the Japanese myth that two divine universal parents descended upon an island that was made of drops of salt. There the god-mother gave birth to other islands, with mountains and rivers, and finally to a whole galaxy of gods. After that astonishing feat the lady withdrew from her sea-girt home and was seen no more.
Thus armed with an air of mystery, a suggestion of interior enlightenment, and an eccentric bearing, Mrs. Hollister found an enthusiastic supporter in the President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, whom some of her intimates rated as being somewhat below the mentally normal.
From that it needed but a step to secure the backing of the United States Government, while John D. Rockefeller, and several of his associates in the Communist front that he founded, contributed to what was called the Spiritual United Nations. Another pro-Communist millionaire, Marshall Field, who has already been noted as a patron of the anarchist Saul David Alinsky, helped to pay for the decoration of the room. The Ford Foundation also gave financial encouragement.
A carefully edited bulletin, that supposedly dealt with the meaning and purpose of the room, was produced by the Lucis Press, which issues printed matter for the United Nations. The suspicious may find food for thought in the fact that this publishing company, when it started in the early part of this century, was known as the Lucifer Press. It now functions at 3 Whitehall Court, London, S.W.1.
That title might well have been retained when dealing with Mrs. Hollister’s creation, for the room (and this explains the shock felt by Cardinal Vagnozzi) was a centre of the Illuminati, given over to the cult of the all-seeing Eye that under a system of allegories and veiled secrets, as translated by the Masters of Wisdom, was dedicated to the service of pagan cults; and the obliteration of Christian in favour of humanistic beliefs.
3.
Two doors, each fitted with tinted glass panels, lead into the room. A guard stands outside, and another is stationed just inside the door. The entrant encounters semi-darkness, and a quiet into which one’s footsteps are absorbed by a thick blue rug on the floor. An arched inner way, still overhung by a sense of night-like stillness, opens out into a space some thirty feet long, wedge-shaped, windowless, and with a solitary yellow light, apparently beamed from nowhere, shimmering on the surface of an altar that stands in the centre, a waist-high block of crystalline iron ore that is known to weigh between six and seven tons.
Blue rugs are spread over the floor, that is elsewhere paved with blue-grey lengths of slate. At the far end of the room, where the dimness melts into total shadow, there is a low railing beyond which only the privileged are allowed to pass.
The fresco-mural, more than eight feet high and some two feet smaller in width, is played upon by a light directed from the top. Framed in a steel panel, it appears to be an apparently meaningless cluster of blue, grey, white, brown, and yellow geometrical designs. But to those versed in esoteric understanding the crescents and triangles present a definite form that takes shape, in the centre and outer circle of the mural, as the Illuminati Eye.
Main attention is not, however, focused upon the mural but on the altar, that is dedicated to ‘the faceless one’, and from which an air of brooding mystery, prevalent in the room, appears to radiate. And as one’s senses respond, it is realised that other shaded lights, concealed in a suspended ceiling that matches the size of the room, add to the sombre impression conveyed by the altar beam.
Pope Paul, at the end of his mission, was presented with a model of the then prospective Temple of Understanding. The Masters extended a similar welcome to Cardinal Suenens, who later visited the Meditation Room; and in return representatives of the Temple were received at the Vatican.
The underlying purpose of the Temple was plainly revealed by its plan, with the all-seeing Eye, faceted like a diamond in the central dome of the building, reflecting the rays of the sun through wings that represented six world faiths – Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Confucianism, and Christianity.
The same symbolism figured at a banquet attended by some five hundred supporters of syncretism at the Waldorf Astor, where a little scene was enacted when a child, holding aloft the model of an egg, was presented to the president of the Temple, the same Mrs. Dickerman Hollister. She tapped the egg with a wand, and the shell dropped away to reveal a tree with six golden branches.
Before leaving America Pope Paul, to press home his voluntary renunciation of spiritual authority, made a show of divesting himself of the Church’s reminders and insignia. He gave the Papal ring of diamonds and rubies, and his pectoral cross of diamonds and emeralds – the two containing four hundred and four diamonds, one hundred and forty-five emeralds, and twenty rubies – to the Buddhist U Thant, then Secretary-General of the United Nations.
A jeweller had estimated that the jewels alone, apart from their traditional value, were worth more than a hundred thousand dollars. They were swept up at an auction for sixty-four thousand dollars, after which the successful buyer sold them to a Mr. David Morton of Orono, Minnesota. Some items of this Papal jewellery were next seen decking the person of a female performer who appeared in the ‘Carson television night-show’.
The ring and the cross continued to go the round of dealers, auction rooms, and superior junk shops, and were last heard of among the articles offered for sale at a market in Geneva.
This abnegation followed Pope Paul’s public show of giving up the tiara, the triple crown that denotes the Trinity, the authority, and the spiritual powers of the Church. The crown was presented to a Pope at the time of his coronation with the words: ‘Receive this tiara adorned with three crowns and know that you are the father of princes and of kings, guide of the world, and Vicar upon earth of Jesus Christ.’
Pope Paul let it be known that he was giving up the crown for the benefit of the poor of the world, a motive that was played up by the Press and that ‘went down well’ with the public. But he was giving up something that had never been his in the first place, and so was not transferable. Moreover, one word from him would have caused all the world-wide missions and charitable organisations of the Church to open their purses for the poor. But instead, he made a theatrical gesture by discarding external signs of religious dignity which, as he and his kind well knew, was a minor step that, added to others of its kind, was part of the process of sapping the Church’s internal significance.
He also made use of a sinister symbol, used by Satanists in the sixth century, that had been revived at the time of Vatican Two. This was a bent or broken cross on which was displayed a repulsive and distorted figure of Christ, which the black magicians and sorcerers of the Middle Ages had made use of to represent the Biblical term, ‘Mark of the Beast’.
Yet not only Paul VI but his successors, the two John-Pauls, carried that object and held it up to be revered by crowds who had not the slightest idea that it stood for anti-Christ. Furthermore, this exhibition of a desiccated figure on a twisted stick was forbidden by Canon 1279, which condemned the usage of any sacred image that is not in keeping with the approved usage of the Church. That it was used for occult purposes may be seen in woodcuts shown in the Museum of Witchcraft in Bayonne, France.
Another disquieting feature of Pope Paul’s visit to the United States was his appearance, at the Yankee Stadium in New York, wearing the Ephod, the ancient garment with breastplate of twelve stones, representing the twelve sons of Jacob, as worn by Caiphas, the High Priest of the Sanhedrin, who called for the crucifixion of Christ.
As though not content with that quite unnecessary innovation, His Holiness continued to wear that non-Christian symbol on other occasions, including the Way of the Cross procession in Rome on March the 27th, 1964; at a ceremony in the Place d’Espagne, Rome, on December the 8th, 1964; the visit of Doctor Ramsay, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the Vatican in 1966; at a reception of parish priests in the Sistine Chapel; and at Castelgandolfo in the summer of 1970.
The tone of Pope Paul’s address to the United Nations had given no little encouragement to the progressives, or Left-wing element, within the Church. For within a few days of Paul’s return to Rome the Bishop of Cuernavaca, Mendes Arceo, was declaring that ‘Marxism is necessary in order to realise God’s kingdom at the present time’; while Pope Paul let it be known that Rome, in order to end an old enmity, was ready to take a new look at secret societies.
As part of that process, Monsignor Pezeril was entrusted with the task of negotiating with a governing body of those societies with a view to establishing friendly contact.
The retentive powers of those who write for the papers, like the memories of those who seriously regard them, are proverbially short. Yet because the Pope’s speech in New York was well in keeping with the prevailing trend, it is not surprising to find that the cue he had given there was taken up, some time later, by the Vatican journal L’Osservatore Romano, which let it be known that the Church’s traditional message had yielded place to a more unorthodox concept, by announcing:
‘There are no true riches but Man.’
The two interlaced triangles explain Lantoine’s remarks that Satan is an equal and indispensable part of God, as seen when the picture is reversed. Simply translated, the motto means: ‘What is above equals what is below.’ It reveals a common occult idea that God is both good and evil, and that Satan is part of him.
=========================
Part Five
The veil covering the greatest deceit ever to have mystified the clergy and baffled the faithful, is doubtless beginning to be torn asunder.
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
An observer of the Roman scene, Georges Virebeau1, tells how a feeling of surprise, that was near consternation, spread through the Vatican one morning in 1976. Students in their cassocks, coloured purple, violet, or black, according to their nationality, stood about in groups, discussing the latest number of a journal, the Borghese. Some, the writer says, were actually perspiring with alarm; for although the morning was hot, the atmosphere engendered by what they read affected them more than the weather.
For the paper contained a detailed list of clerics, some holding the most exalted offices, who were said to be members of secret societies.
It was staggering news, for the doubtful head-shaking students were acquainted with Church law; and Canon Law 2335 expressly declared that a Catholic who joined any such society became excommunicate, ipso facto.
We have seen that the secret societies had, long ago, declared war on the Church, which they recognised as the one great obstacle barring their way to world domination; and the Church responded by condemning the societies and making laws for her own protection. Canon 2335 was framed for that purpose, while Canon 2336 was concerned with disciplinary measures to be enforced against any cleric who might be inveigled into joining a society. In the case of a Bishop he would lose all juridical powers, and be barred from exercising priestly functions including ordination and consecrating.
That the Church considered the societies to be a most dangerous threat to its own existence is shown by the number of warnings and condemnations issued by the Vatican. What is usually regarded as the first official instance of this occurred under Pope Clement XII (1730-40), which stressed that belonging to any such society was incompatible with membership of the Church.
Eleven years later Benedict XIV confirmed this in the first Papal Bull directed against the societies. Pius VI and Pius VII followed suit, the last named being specially concerned with the threat posed by the Carbonari. Three subsequent Popes, Leo XII, Pius VIII, and Gregory VI added their weight to the strictures. A further condemnation came from Pius IX who, incidentally had to face the charge that he had descended from the Counts of Mastai-Feretti, who had almost certainly been involved with the societies. Leo XIII spoke of the plotters aiming to ‘destroy from top to bottom the whole religious and social discipline born of Christian institutions’, and to replace belief in the supernatural spirit by a sort of second-hand Naturalism.
Just as the writings of Voltaire, Diderot, and Helvetius had opened up the way for the French Revolution, so the secret societies, said Pius X (1903-14), were working to destroy Catholicism in modern France.
So paramount was the danger to Benedict XV that not even the cares imposed by the 1914 war could drive it finally from his mind; while Pius XI reiterated that the secret societies derived much of their strength from the conspiracy of silence that has never ceased to surround them.
Although conducted largely behind the scenes, and therefore away from the public gaze, the struggle between the Church and the secret societies has been more bitter and prolonged than any international conflict; the reason being that it has turned, in great part, on ideas, on a mental and therefore a moral basis; and although not universally recognised, the moral outlook influences the whole nature of man more than any conflict for personal gain, territory, or positive power.
On one side was a religion that, its supporters claimed, rested on facts, the objective value of revealed truth, and a sacramental observance. On the other, a system grounded in humanitarian ideals in which all men, freed from the shackles or dogma and orthodoxy, could share, and on which they could agree. Truth, they said, is relative, hence the claims of objective and revealed truth are seen to be not only valueless, but fundamentally false.
So the struggle developed over the centuries, with those who accepted the atheism, Positivism, or materialism that reached its summit with the French Revolution, on one side; and the strictures uttered by various Popes, from Clement XII in the mid-eighteenth century to Pius XI who died in 1939, on the other.
The least condemnatory of those strictures referred to the societies as ‘conspiracies of silence’. The most damning called them ‘synagogues of Satan’.
But not all their members regarded the Satanic connection as a stigma. This is how one of their principle archivists, Albert Lantoine, went out of his way to address Pius XII in August, 1943: ‘I am pleased to say that we, possessed of a critical spirit, are servants of Satan. You defend truth, and are servants of God. The two masters complete each other, and need each other. You would exterminate us. Be careful! The death of Satan will mark the agony of your God. You must accept the alliance with Satan, and admit that he completes God.’
The news in the Borghese, that so alarmed the students, came as the culmination of a fear that had lingered for some time among the more conservative elements in the Vatican. The exposure of Archbishop Bugnini, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, had been shattering enough. But the revelations in the Borghese were on a more considerable scale, and came perilously near to touching the very nerve of the Church.
It was known that enemy agents had long been nibbling at its fabric. But so long as Church discipline remained strong, it was difficult for the most ardent infiltrator to gain a footing in the priesthood. But the general relaxation and reforms that followed Pope John’s Council opened doors by which agents entered not only seminaries but the Curia, the governing body of the Church.
Because some of those agents rose high in the Church, and became Cardinals and Bishops, many who might otherwise have been suspicious were deceived. The ecclesiastical titles, and the offices that went with them, were thought to be sufficient (though they were really only outward) safeguard. The hands of the manipulators were raised in blessing, and the faithful knelt.
The warnings against them that were issued went largely unheeded or fell stone dead against the historically impressive walls that bounded the Church. ‘A Fifth Column exists within the clergy’, wrote Father Arrupe, Superior-General of the Jesuits, ‘and is steadily working in favour of atheism’.
A similar theme was expressed by a number of theologians who came together in Geneva in 1976, as an International Committee of Defence of Catholic Doctrine. ‘The presence of the enemies of the Church, in the internal structure of the Church, forms a part of the mystery of iniquity and should be unmasked.’
But so far those fears had taken no more tangible shape than to unsettle the minds of students, who felt their future might be disturbed by the revelations that produced little or no effect among their superiors and instructors in the Vatican. The usual inquiry was ordered (by some of the churchmen who had been named as guilty) with the declared object of tracing the source of the rumours. But nothing happened; and neither did one of those who had been implicated ever issue a downright or straightforward denial.
The Borghese article claimed to have a detailed list of conspirators who had penetrated into the Church, together with dates, numbers, and code names. These allegations were answered by a writer in L’Aurora, M. Jacques Ploncard, who asserted that no prelate had been affiliated with a secret society since the time of Charles X, the last of the Bourbons who ascended the throne in 1824, and was driven out by the revolution of 1830.
This was palpably false, as was proved by determined investigators who carried the attack into enemy territory. By one means or another, sometimes posing as members of the Government, they gained access to the Italian Register of Secret Societies, and drew up a much longer and more impressive list than that published in the Borghese.
The particulars that follow are those of Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops who, as alleged by those who examined it, figure in the Register. Some have died since the list was drawn up – at one time it was said to have included one hundred and twenty-five prelates. Some of the offices have changed hands.
But the names and ecclesiastical titles, with the dates on which they were initiated into a society, and their secret code names, must call for serious consideration, except from those Catholics who blindly follow the rules, who hang upon the words of a priest, and who think it part of their faith to see no stain upon the Church.
It may be noted that the code name often incorporates the first two letters of the cleric’s name.
2.
Agostino, Cardinal Casaroli. Secretary of State. Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Public Affairs, and of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops, and of the Pontifical Commission for the Revision of Canon Law. Member of the Commission for Russia and of the Commission for Latin America. The most influential prelate in the Vatican after the Pope, whose place he takes during the absence of the latter. He is known as the ‘Kissinger of Vatican diplomacy’. Initiated into a secret society September 28th, 1957. Secret code name Casa.
Leon Joseph, Cardinal Suenens. Primate of Belgium. Member of the Pontifical Commission for the Revision of Canon Law. Was active in the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide, the Sacred Congregation of Rites and Ceremonies, and the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and University Studies. He was a delegate and Moderator of the Second Vatican Council, and he has been associated with Protestant Pentecostalism, that reduces people to revivalist hysteria. Initiated June 15th, 1967. Code name Lesu.
Jean, Cardinal Villot. He was Secretary of State to Paul VI, and Camerlengo (the Chamberlain who takes over affairs at the Vatican on the death of a Pope). Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, and administrator of the Patrimony of the Holy See. He came of a family which has produced over the last two hundred years, from father to son, Grand Masters of secret societies including the Rosicrucians.
Being aware that this had become known, he strenuously denied that he was associated in any way with such societies. One of his denials was contained in a letter, dated October 31st, 1976, sent from the Vatican by way of the Papal Nunciature in Paris, to the Director of Lectures Françaises, a monthly publication. It ran: ‘Having noticed that in your review of September 1976, you referred to Cardinal Villot as a member of a secret society, Cardinal Villot declares in the most formal fashion that he has never had, at any moment in his life, the least connection with any secret society. He adheres closely to the condemnations imposed by the Sovereign Pontiffs. Cardinal Villot begs the Director of Lectures Françaises to publish this denial in a future issue, and thanks him in advance.’
One cannot help wondering how Cardinal Villot, who appears to have been afflicted with an unusually short memory, managed to fulfil his office as Secretary of State.
For records show that he was initiated into a secret society on August 6th, 1966, and that in the hope of avoiding identification he was given two code names, Jeani and Zurigo.
Achille, Cardinal Lienart. Bishop of Lille. He was formerly a captain in the French Army, and a life-long ultra-Liberal. He led the progressive forces at the Second Vatican Council, on which account it was said that ‘his ideas were redder than his robes’. Shortly before his death he startled those in the room by suddenly exclaiming: ‘Humanly speaking, the Church is dead.’ Initiated October 15th, 1912. Code name could not be verified.
Ugo, Cardinal Poletti. Vicar-General of the diocese of Rome, and so controller of all the clergy in the city. Member of the Sacred Congregation of Sacraments and of Divine Worship. President of Pontifical Works, and of the Liturgical Academy. Archpriest of the Patriarchal Basilica of the Lateran. Initiated February 17th, 1969. Code name Upo.
Franco, Cardinal Biffi. Head of the St. John Lateran Pontifical University. Initiated August 15th, 1969. Code name Bifra.
Michele, Cardinal Pellegrino. Archbishop of Turin where the Holy Shroud is kept. Initiated May 2nd, 1960. Code name Palmi.
Sebastiano, Cardinal Baggio. Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops. Initiated August 15th, 1957. Code name Seba.
Pasquale, Cardinal Macchi. Prelate of Honour and secretary to Paul VI. After being excommunicated for heresy, he was reinstated by Cardinal Villot. Initiated April 23rd, 1958. Code name Mapa.
Salvatore, Cardinal Pappalardo. Archbishop of Palermo, Sicily. Initiated May 6th, 1943. Code name Salpo.
Cardinal Garrone. Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education. He brazenly let it be known that he was a member of a secret society, but he was neither removed nor publicly reproved. Date of initiation and code name could not be verified.
Archbishop Annibale Bugnini. Consultant in the Sacred Congregation of Propagation of the Faith, and in the Sacred Congregation of Holy Rites. The story of his unmasking during the Second Vatican Council has been told. Died July 3rd, 1982. Initiated April 23rd, 1963. Code name Buan.
Archbishop Giovanni Benelli. Archbishop of Florence. He secured the appointment of Cardinal Villot as Secretary of State in place of the orthodox Cardinal Cicognani. Date of initiation and code name could not be verified.
Archbishop Mario Brini. Consultor of the Pontifical Commission for the Revision of Canon Law. Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Eastern Churches, and a member of the Pontifical Commission for Russia. Initiated July 13th, 1969. Code name Mabri.
Bishop Michele Buro. Prelate of the Pontifical Commission to Latin America. Initiated March 21st, 1969. Code name Bumi.
Bishop Fiorenzo Angelini. Titular Bishop of Massene, Greece. Delegate of the Cardinal-Vicar of Rome for Hospitals. Initiated October 14th, 1957. Code name could not be verified.
Monsignor Mario Rizzi. Prelate of Honour to the Holy Father. He was responsible for discarding certain Canon Laws which formed part of the foundation of the Church from Apostolic times. Initiated September 16th, 1969. Code name Mari or Monmari.
Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto. Attaché of Secretary of State, and Notary of the Second Section of the Supreme Tribunal and of the Apostolic Segnatura. He is listed as a very important person among the societies. Initiated April 2nd, 1970. Code name Pimpi.
Monsignor Francesco Marchisano. Prelate of Honour to the Holy Father. Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education. Initiated February 14th, 1961. Code name Frama.
Aurelio Sabattani. Archbishop of Giustiniana, Milan Province, Italy. First Secretary of the Supreme Apostolic Segnatura. Initiated June 22nd, 1969. Code name Asa.
Abino Mensa. Archbishop of Vercelli, Piedmont, Italy. Initiated July 23rd, 1969. Code name Mena.
Enzio D’Antonio. Archbishop of Trivento. Initiated June 21st, 1969. Code name could not be verified.
Alessandro Gottardi. Archbishop of Trento, Italy. He controls candidates who are likely to be raised to the dignity of Cardinal. He is addressed as ‘Doctor’ at secret society meetings. Initiated June 13th, 1959. Code name Algo.
Antonio Travia. Titular Bishop of Termini Imerese. He is the head of Catholic schools. Initiated September 15th, 1967. Code name Atra.
Giuseppe Mario Sensi. Titular Bishop of Sardi, Asia Minor. Papal Nuncio to Portugal. Initiated November 2nd, 1967. Code name Gimase.
Francesco Salerno. Bishop Prefect. Initiated May 4th, 1962. Code name Safra.
Antonio Mazza. Titular Bishop of Velia. Initiated April 14th, 1971. Code name Manu.
Mario Schierano. Titular Bishop of Acrida, Cosenza Province, Italy. Chief Military Chaplain of the Italian Armed Forces. Initiated July 3rd, 1959. Code name Maschi.
Luigi Maverna. Bishop of Chiavari, Genoa, Italy. Initiated June 3rd, 1968. Code name Luma.
Aldo Del Monte. Bishop of Novara, Piedmont, Italy. Initiated August 25th, 1969. Code name Adelmo.
Marcello Morganta. Bishop of Ascoli, Piceno, in East Italy. Initiated July 22nd, 1955. Code name Morma.
Luigi Bettazzi. Bishop of Lyrea, Italy. Initiated May llth, 1966. Code name Lube.
Gaetano Bonicelli. Bishop of Albano, Italy. Initiated May 12th, 1959. Code name Boga.
Salvatore Baldassarri. Bishop of Ravenna, Italy. Initiated February 17th, 1958. Code name Balsa.
Vito Gemmiti. Member of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops. Initiated March 25th, 1968. Code name Vige.
Pier Luigi Mazzoni. Member of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops. Initiated September 14th, 1959. Code name Pilum.
Ernesto Basadonna. Prelate of Milan. Initiated September 14th, 1963. Code name Base.
Mario Bicarelli. Prelate of Vicenza, Italy. Initiated September 23rd, 1964. Code name Bima.
Salvatore Marsili. Abbot of the Order of St. Benedict of Finalpia, near Modena, Italy. Initiated July 2nd, 1963. Code name Salma.
Annibale Ilari. Abbot of Sua Santita. Initiated March 16th, 1969. Code name Ila.
Franco Gualdrini. Rector of Capri. Initiated May 22nd, 1961. Code name Grefra.
Lino Lozza. Chancellor of the Rome Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Initiated July 23rd, 1969. Code name Loli.
Daimazio Mongillo. Professor of Dominican Moral Theology, Holy Angels Institute, Rome. Initiated February 16th, 1969. Code name Monda.
Flaminio Cerruti. Chief of the Office of University of Congregation Studies. Initiated April 2nd, 1960.
Enrico Chiavacci. Professor of Morals at the University of Florence. Initiated July 2nd, 1970. Code name Chie.
Carmelo Nigro. Rector of the Seminary Pontifical of Major Studies. Initiated December 21st, 1970. Code name Carni.
Carlo Graziani. Rector of the Minor Seminary of the Vatican. Initiated July 23rd, 1961. Code name Graca.
Luigi Belloli. Rector of the Lombardy Seminary. Initiated April 6th, 1958. Code name Bella.
Virgilio Noe. Head of the Sacred Congregation of Divine Worship. Initiated April 3rd, 1961. Code name Vino.
Dino Monduzzi. Regent to the Prefect of the Pontifical House. Initiated March 11th, 1967. Code name Mondi.
Vittorio Palistra. Legal Counsel to the Sacred Rota of the Vatican State. Initiated May 6th, 1943. Code name Pavi.
Giuseppe Ferraioli. Member of the Sacred Congregation of Public Affairs of the Church. Initiated November 24th, 1969. Code name Gife.
Alberto Bovone. Substitute-Secretary of the Sacred Office. Initiated April 30th, 1967.
Terzo Nattelino. Vice-Prefect of the Archives of Secretariat of the Vatican. Initiated June 17th, 1957. Code name Nate.
Georgio Vale. Priest official of the Rome diocese. Initiated February 21st, 1971. Code name Vagi.
Dante Balboni. Assistant to the Vatican Pontifical Commission for Biblical Studies. Initiated July 23rd, 1968. Code name Balda.
Vittorio Trocchi. Secretary for Catholic Laity in Consistory of the Vatican State Consultations. Initiated July 12th, 1962. Code name Trovi.
Piero Vergari. Head Protocol Officer of the Vatican State Segnatura. He controls Canon Law changes. Initiated December 14th, 1970. Code name Pive.
Dante Pasquinelli. Member of the Council of the Nuncio to Madrid. Initiated January 12th, 1969. Code name Pada.
Mario Pimpo. Vicar of the Office of General Affairs. Initiated March 15th, 1970. Code name Pima.
Igino Rogger. Officer in the diocese of Rome. Initiated April 16th, 1968. Code name Igno.
Pietro Rossano. Member of the Sacred Congregation of nonChristian Studies. Initiated February 12th, 1968. Code name Piro.
Francesco Santangelo. Substitute-General of Defence Legal Council. Initiated November 12th, 1970. Code name Frasa.
Gaetano Scanagatta. Member of the Commission of Pompeii and Loreto. Initiated September 23rd, 1971. Code name Gasca.
Pio Laghi. Apostolic Delegate to Argentina. Initiated August 24th, 1969. Code name Lapi.
Pietro Santini. Vice-Official of the Tribunal of the Vicariate of the Vatican. Initiated August 23rd, 1964. Code name Sapa.
Domenico Semproni. Member of the Tribunal of the. Vicariate of the Vatican. Initiated April 16th, 1960. Code name Dose.
Angelo Lanzoni. Chief of the Office of Secretariat of State. Initiated September 24th, 1956. Code name Lana.
Giovanni Lajola. Member of the Council of Public Affairs of the Church. Initiated July 27th, 1970. Code name Lagi.
Venerio Mazzi. Member of the Council of Public Affairs of the Church. Initiated October 13th, 1966. Code name Mave.
Antonio Gregagnin. He is the Tribune of First Causes for Beatification for Canonisation. Initiated October 19th, 1967. Code name Grea.
Giovanni Caprile. Director of Catholic Civil Affairs. Initiated September 5th, 1957. Code name Gica.
Roberto Tucci. Director-General of the Vatican Radio. A most important post since this station emits news round the clock in thirty-two languages. Initiated June 27th, 1957. Code name Turo.
Virgilio Levi. Assistant-Director of the Vatican daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, and of Vatican Radio Station. Initiated July 4th, 1958. Code name Vile.
There are 526 Masonic Lodges in Italy. In view of that, their admitted membership of only 20,000 is questionable.
The French Register of Secret Societies is more closely guarded than the Italian, so that particulars of recent initiations cannot be quoted. The most sustained list of clerics belonging to French secret societies covers a few decades preceding the French Revolution, and it numbered, even at a time when infiltration of the Church by its enemies was on a smaller scale than it soon attained, some 256 members.
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