Today, Catholic pundit Ann Barnhardt Pope Benedict XVI's brother Msgr. Georg Ratzinger and the speculation that "threats to" his sibling could have been part of the reason he was "coerced" to resign:
"Pope Benedict’s brother Msgr. Georg Ratzinger died just a bit ago in Regensburg."
"If the assumption in Rome is true that Pope Benedict XVI was at least
partially coerced by threats to his brother , that is now over."
"Eternal rest grant to him, O Lord; and let light perpetual
shine upon him. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful
departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen."
So the apparent unasked question is: Is it possible that Pope Benedict
XVI was "coerced" to resign a forced resignation would be invalid.'” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.lifesitenews.com/mobile/news/cardinal-kasper-a-forced-resignation-of-pope-francis-would-be-invalid#ampshare=https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-kasper-a-forced-resignation-of-pope-francis-would-be-invalid https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1LN1IL#ampshare=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-abuse-law/can-the-popes-accusers-force-him-to-resign-idUSKCN1LN1IL If Kasper, Reuters and canon law expert Cafardi are right that it is "difficult, if not impossible" for a pope to resign "if a political faction in the Church [and outside the Church] if trying to force it" then Pope Benedict XVI probably, if not for sure, is still Pope which would mean Francis is not a valid or real pope. a forced resignation [which] would [make it] invalid" according to Kasper? On July 18, 2017 , One Peter Five publisher Steve Skojec mentioned one possiblity: On Saturday, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had a message read to those gathered at the funeral of the late Cardinal Meisner . In it, he said something that drew a great deal of attention:
"What particularly impressed me from my last conversations
with the now passed Cardinal was the relaxed cheerfulness, the inner
joy and the confidence at which he had arrived. We know that this
passionate shepherd and pastor found it difficult to leave his post,
especially at a time in which the Church stands in particularly
pressing need of convincing shepherds who can resist the dictatorship of
the spirit of the age and who live and think the faith with
determination. However, what moved me all the more was that, I'm this
last period of his life, he learned to let go and to live out of a deep
conviction that the Lord does not abandon His Church, even if
[sometimes] the boat has taken on so much water as to be on the verge of
capsizing."
Some German speakers have since pointed out that the last sentence
was slightly more conditional than our translation read. That the word
“sometimes” should appear before “the boat”, as I’ve placed it in
brackets above. But I find this to be a distinction without a
difference. Like many, many others, I had the distinct impression when
reading this that the former pope was blinking a message in Morse Code... ... But clearly, the impression his statement gave was nearly universal.
Many, many Catholics saw the comments as a shot across the bow . As a man
forced into a compromise position who was desperate to convey that
things in the Church are not as good, in his view, as he has given the
public impression he believes. Which is, perhaps, why I find it exceedingly odd that just today —
three days after the former pope’s comments began their viral
circulation of the Internet — a new report
has come out concerning alleged abuse of members of the Regensburger
Domspatzen boys choir in Germany, of which Georg Ratzinger, the
93-year-old older brother of the former pope, served as head for 30
years. The report that was issued in 2016 alleged 231 victims; the new
story claims at least 547 victims. The initial abuse allegations surfaced in 2010.
Now of course, it’s likely just a coincidence. Clearly, the
investigation has been ongoing for the better part of a decade. Perhaps
this new report had been scheduled to come out this week all along. But
the timing certainly is interesting — a former pope speaks up in a way
the world interprets as a criticism of a pontificate known for its
autocratic and controlling style, led by a pope a pope known as one who
keeps and settles scores, and within 3 days an international news story
implicating his elderly brother in a sex abuse scandal is making
headlines around the globe.
If nobody is using this as leverage to pressure the former pope into
silence, then the odds are simply fascinating. Make of it what you will. https://onepeterfive.com/for-the-pope-emeritus-a-strange-sort-of-coincidence/]
"Funny though - Steve says that Pope Francis is the Pope, but if Skojec
believes that Pope Benedict was forced into resigning under threat of
black mail and held captive against his will then that would mean that
the election of Francis was invalid and that Pope Benedict is still the
Pope."
"This is lost on Steve and his followers."Just as ironic, on August 11, 2017 , one month later, Skojec's One Peter Five which apparently claims Francis is infallibly and definitely the pope was this post showing that there was "a political faction in the Church [and outside the Church] trying to force" Benedict to resign according to Italian journalist Alessandro Rico: On May 17, I published an article
in the Italian newspaper La Verità about pope Benedict’s abdication. A
few days before, in a renowned Italian geopolitical magazine called
Limes, Professor Germano Dottori had argued that Joseph Ratzinger’s 2013
abdication, and the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s
resignation in 2011, after a financial storm sold to public opinion as a
“public debt” crisis, were the result of pressures on the part of Obama
administration in the United States.
According to Dottori, Obama was eager to dethrone Benedict XVI for
two reasons. On the one hand, his presidency was close to fundamentalist
Islam (de facto fostered by regime change in Libya and Egypt
and civil war in Syria, provoked by U.S. former secretary of state
Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy design), whereas Ratzinger, ever since
his famous Regensburg lecture ,
had been identified internationally as a strong opponent of Islamism.
On the other hand, Obama was worried about the Church’s reconciliatory
efforts toward Moscow’s Orthodox patriarch, within the scope – Dottori
wrote – “of a geopolitical project aimed at European-Russian
integration, actively supported by Germany and Italy.” The Obama administration may have resorted to two instruments:
fostering scandals within the Church and the Italian government and
threatening to drain away Italian and Vatican financial resources. Italy
was at risk of being excluded from international financial markets. The
menace against the Vatican was to bar the IOR (Istituto per le Opere di
Religione, the Vatican bank) from the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide
Interbank Financial Telecommunication) network. Taking as an excuse the
fact that the IOR did not abide by international rules of transparency,
Deutsche Bank (which runs point-of-sale payment systems in the Vatican
and was suspected by Bankitalia of hosting an IOR account where all
money earned within the Vatican converged) had been induced to block all
ATMs in Vatican City, a service curiously reactivated, Dottori noticed,
right after Pope Benedict’s abdication. With regard to this story, it is useful to spend a few more words on
an important figure: former president of the IOR Ettore Gotti Tedeschi.
Chosen by Pope Benedict in 2009 to reform the IOR and bring it back to
international standards of transparency, in 2010, Tedeschi was the
subject of a money-laundering investigation. Notice how suspicious the events look: two years after the beginning
of the inquiry, in 2012, Tedeschi was fired from his office; in 2014,
after Pope Benedict’s resignation, Rome’s judge dismissed the inquiry
and all allegations against Tedeschi; in 2015, in an interview with The
Catholic Herald, Tedeschi declared that he had been kicked out by the
IOR’s board of directors because of his intention to make radical
reforms. And in a 2012 interview released to the Italian newspaper Il
Fatto Quotidiano, Tedeschi had already revealed that in those months, he
was so scared of being assassinated that he had written down a secret
report on the IOR. (According to my sources, he had written his will as
well.) The secret report had been entrusted to two of Tedeschi’s close
friends as a sort of insurance policy on his own life. Tedeschi stated
that he had discovered “something scary” and had engaged a struggle
against the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who
was resolutely opposing any disclosure of the IOR’s secret archives to
Italian authorities. If you connect Tedeschi’s story to Dottori’s claim regarding financial
blackmail enacted against the Vatican Bank in order to pressure Pope
Benedict, you might suspect that Tedeschi was well aware that obscure
forces, from within and without the Vatican , were swarming, and that his
opposition to those influences was probably the cause of his
misfortunes...... Now, while Laporta claims to be “90% sure” of this report, it is much
harder to ascertain whether, or to what degree, Pope Francis was aware
of a financial and political operation that, nonetheless, was likely to
have been buttressed by the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, and to have
required the American Apostolic Nunciature’s mediation. Laporta
hypothesizes that during his visit to Rome, in June 2017, President
Donald Trump might have had an animated discussion with Pope Francis, as
he asked for elucidations on the Church’s aid to Clinton. According to
him, the pope’s waxen and scrawny expression in the photographs taken
next to the American president was due precisely to their quarrel and to
Francis’s embarrassment. Elucidations are precisely what we need. In the spirit of the letter
addressed by The Remnant to Donald Trump, American Catholics should ask
their new president to investigate the Obama administration’s
involvement in the events that led to Pope Benedict’s abdication. Was there "a political faction in the Church [and outside the Church]
trying to force Benedict to resign in which "threats to his brother"
could possibly be involved? "[I]f Skojec
believes that Pope Benedict was forced into resigning under threat of
black mail and held captive against his will then that would mean that
the election of Francis was invalid and that Pope Benedict is still the
Pope." Please, pray an Our Father now for President Trump and our Church as well as our country now
because this is the important fork in the road for the Catholic Church and the United States.
Please, keep this intentions in your prayers.
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