PPope Francis said that “there are things that only women intuit”. Now a book between news and history, written by a woman, rewrites the Vatican events of the last two Popes: Benedict and Francis. And how they were both trapped (one resigned, the other on the verge of being ousted) in a war fought for twenty-five years.
Already the title The Throne and the Altar it is a provocation together with the subtitle War in the Vatican, an unpublished story (Cantagalli). But this is in fact the case. The one that Maria Antonietta Calabrò he says it’s really a sort of war.
Data, information, references allow us to have a very precise picture of what happened inside the Sacred Walls. A volume against the usual narrative that tells the story of the two Popes against each other, the conservative and the progressive.
Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Actually, the book documents that important sectors of the Church did everything to make this rupture happen. And not for theological reasons, but for more substantial reasons of interest, given that in the last two decades the global influence of the Vatican has often entered into a collision course with the interests of other states (from the United States to China, from Russia to European Union, including Italy).
“The Throne and the Altar. War in the Vatican, an unpublished story” by Maria Antonietta Calabrò (Cantagalli).
The conflict also involved actual episodes of espionage against the Holy See. The volume demonstrates, also on the basis of the documents of the Vatican trial against Cardinal Becciu, how the campaign to derail Pope Francis’ financial reforms was launched before his election in 2013in the same hours in which Benedict XVI was leaving the Apostolic Palace.
A serious investigation with a non-scandalistic tone, but one that leaves you breathlessas the no-holds-barred fights, the intrigues, the ocelots, which almost blocked the engine room of Peter’s Barque, are described “sine ira ac studio”.
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All articles by Aldo Cazzullo.
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