In this week's first live episode of Faith & Reason, Father Charles Murr shared a story relating Msgr. Mario Marini’s views on then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
(LifeSiteNews) — In this week’s first live episode of Faith & Reason, featuring John-Henry Westen, Father Charles Murr, and Liz Yore, Murr shared a story relating how his longtime friend Msgr. Mario Marini viewed then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Vatican maneuvers.
While Fr. Murr knew about the revelation for some time, he did not wish to share it beforehand, as all he had to go by was his word and that of another priest privy to the matter. Having spoken with the priest about a week before this episode, he decided now was the time to say something.
He begins with a biography of the life of Mario Marini for those unfamiliar with the man. Marini was born to a well-off Italian family. While Marini wanted to become a priest, he received a doctorate in civil engineering at the behest of his family, an anti-Catholic family who thought that it would dispel him of any vocation. It didn’t work, and Marini entered seminary after receiving his doctorate. He was financially cut off from his family and fell under the patronage of the then-Archbishop of Milan, Giovanni-Battista Montini, the future St. Paul VI.
Marini had a hand in the Second Vatican Council as a seminarian, helping as an ecclesial “page boy,” and was ordained a priest toward its end. He served in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State beginning in 1974 after serving as a priest in Mexico, eventually working in the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and the Congregation for the Clergy, never appearing in official Vatican ceremonies. It was Marini who helped Murr discern a vocation to the priesthood.
The news Murr shares regarding Pope Francis was that he, Marini, and the other priest were having dinner shortly after the conclave of 2005 that resulted in the Ratzinger pontificate. According to Murr, Marini told him and the other priest that he was friends with the then-Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio, and that Bergoglio told him that he considered himself a traditionalist, with an ire toward the liberation theology that needed to be rooted out of the Jesuits. After the conclave, however, Marini told the other priests that he was wary of the Argentine cardinal.
“From what Mario said, Bergoglio presented himself … as a very humble, pious, one of the last good Jesuits, who was suffering for how much he was defending the Society of Jesus and wanted to get things back on track,” Murr says. “Something happened in the 2005 election because after that Mario met with him but did not have the same confidence in him. He started taking a distance from him, and that was it.”
“There’s something wrong here,” Murr says, explaining that the way Argentine dictator Juan Peron would win people’s support was tell them what they wanted to hear, and that what the Church is dealing with is something similar to Peron.
Yore, commenting on Murr’s revelation, recalled that historian Henry Sire said that Cardinal Bergoglio “planted people in the Vatican.”
“He wanted to know who were the power centers, who had information,” Yore explains. “And it sounds very much like he was pumping Marini for information,” Yore says, with Murr confirming her opinion. Yore also recalls that after the 2013 conclave, people were relieved to hear media reports that Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, was against liberation theology and a conservative.
Murr also notes that Marini was a man who could easily spot a lie, and that one needed to be a “very good actor” to fool him. He also notes, following an observation by Westen, that Bergoglio would not have been elected in the 2013 conclave if the cardinals knew how liberal he was. Murr also states that most of the episcopate and the College of Cardinals are displeased with the current pontificate, most of the reaction to it done in silence.