Sandro Magister, “It’s Pretty Incredible That The Pope Said These Things,”

Sandro Magister

They appear to underscore numerous reports in the prelude to the election of the pope, that corruption, blackmail and violation of one of the highest codes of Catholic conduct were part of the intrigue that scandalized the Vatican in recent years. Francis, who portrays himself as a simple pope of the people, has made it clear that one of his highest priorities is to put the Vatican’s house in order. He has appointed a group of eight cardinals to advise him on how to overhaul the Vatican, and the head of the Vatican Bank has recently given a series of interviews to journalists — an openness unheard of under his predecessors.

“It’s pretty incredible that the pope said these things,” said Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert at the Italian weekly L’Espresso. “I don’t think there’s any doubt on the foundation of the phrases attributed to him. Otherwise they would have denied it.”

The pope made the remarks at the Vatican on June 6, while speaking to a meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious, the regional organization for priests and nuns of religious orders.

“In the Curia, there are also holy people, really, there are holy people. But there also is a stream of corruption, there is that as well, it is true,” he said in Spanish, according to a loose summary of the meeting posted on a Chilean Web site, Reflection and Liberation, and later translated into English by the blog Rorate Caeli. “The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there ... We need to see what we can do,” Francis continued, in the document, produced here verbatim.

On Tuesday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, did not deny the reports of Francis’s remarks, saying only that he had no comment on a private meeting — a marked shift from past months, in which the Vatican vehemently called such reports “unverified, unverifiable or completely false.” 

Link (here) to the full story at the New York Times