They remember things.

Cardinal Bergoglio . . .  became Argentina’s most prominent churchman, and there is no shortage of accounts of him as he was seen inside and outside the Church.

Perhaps the most penetrating study of his personality was the one that was published by Omar Bello, El Verdadero Francisco (“ The Real Francis”), within a few months of his election as Pope.

It is worth mentioning that this book vanished from the book-shops with unaccountable speed and is now unobtainable, a fate suffered by some other publications that were not favourable to Pope Francis.

Omar Bello was a public-relations executive who in 2005 was engaged to launch a new Church television channel which President Menem had gifted to the archdiocese of Buenos Aires, and over eight years he was to work for the Archbishop and get to know him.

As a professional in the field himself, Bello was quick to detect in Cardinal Bergoglio an accomplished self-promoter, disguised behind an image of simplicity and austerity. Bello moved in the circles of the archiepiscopal staff and got to hear the many stories that circulated about their enigmatic superior.

Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 467-475). Kindle Edition.

Devious.

Probably the best-known of these is the one of Félix Bottazzi, an employee whom the Archbishop decided one day to dispense with, and he arranged his dismissal without showing his hand33.

Once he was out of the Curia, Mr Bottazzi sought an interview with Cardinal Bergoglio, who received him with friendly confusion: “But I knew nothing about it, my son. You surprise me …. What did they sack you for? Who did it?”

Mr Bottazzi did not get his job back, but Bergoglio presented him with a new car, and he went away convinced that the Cardinal was a saint, pushed by forces beyond his control and dominated by a circle of malicious subordinates.

Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 476-481). Kindle Edition.

What happened?

From Bello’s description, this way of dealing with people may have been as much temperamental as political; he quotes the account of a priest who worked for Bergoglio and thought him his friend: “He manipulated me for years …. The guy manipulates you with the affections. You think he’s your daddy and he strings you along.” 34 In this case there was no apparent practical purpose in the treatment dispensed.

Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 481-485). Kindle Edition.

Tricky fellow.

 

Look at this front page as readable, uncluttered, clear. The head(bones) connect to the story{bones), hear the words of a Chicago newspaper with punch and clarity.

Then turn to Chi Trib’s maelstrom of this and that, full of just-out-of-college meanderings. How do grown men and women come up with campus hi-jinks, too clever by half?

Gimme that old-time newspapering, if you will, where what you see is what you get, keeping it simple for strap-hangers.

Very big complaint that Muslims do not get equal time with Catholicism:

Muslim students at Loyola University in Chicago say the Catholic institution’s celebration of Christmas highlights an unfortunate indifference to holidays like Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

A recent column in the Loyola Phoenix by writer Sajedah Al-khzaleh, “Religious Holidays Aren’t Represented Equally on Campus,” bemoans her school’s focus on Catholic traditions while those of other faiths are downplayed, adding that the private Jesuit university founded in 1870 should do more to make international students feel comfortable.

“Although Loyola fosters a space for non-Christian religions to practice their faith — such as in the Damen Student Center’s second floor of Ministry Offices for Muslim, Hindu and Jewish students — there is a lack of public festivity compared to Christmas, such as decorations and activities of other religions’ holidays the entire student body could be part of,” the author wrote.

I am taking bets that the university will crumble at this request/demand.

Decking halls with boughs of palm trees cannot be far away.

It was in 1991, when the archbishop of Buenos Aires picked the then mere Jesuit, languishing in the Jesuit doghouse, to be his auxiliary bishop.

Since Father Bergoglio, as a Jesuit, would need a dispensation [from his Jesuit obligations] to be appointed, it was necessary to obtain a report from his order, for which Cardinal [Archbishop] Quarracino applied in 1991.

It was provided by the Jesuit General, and it represents the most damning character study of Jorge Bergoglio composed by anyone before his election as Pope.

The text of the report has never been made public, but the following account is given by a priest who had access to it before it disappeared from the Jesuit archive: Father [General] Kolvenbach accused Bergoglio of a series of defects, ranging from habitual use of vulgar language to deviousness, disobedience concealed under a mask of humility, and lack of psychological balance; with a view to his suitability as a future bishop, the report pointed out that he had been a divisive figure as Provincial of his own order.

Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 450-456). Kindle Edition.

The text never made public?

It is not surprising that, on being elected Pope, Francis made efforts to get his hands on the existing copies of the document, and the original filed in the official Jesuit archives in Rome has disappeared.

Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 456-457). Kindle Edition.

Oh my.

But it turned out, the general’s devastating non-recommendation didn’t matter.

Cardinal Quarracino, however, was determined to have Bergoglio as bishop and, although it took him a special audience with Pope John Paul II, he got his way. In 1992

Father Bergoglio was duly appointed one of the several auxiliary bishops of Buenos Aires. In that office, he followed the line of his Archbishop, who was regarded as being on the right of the Church, in the populist style of John Paul II.

The new hierarchical career which Quarracino’s intervention had opened up for him was not long in blossoming. In 1997 Bishop Bergoglio was granted the right of succession, and the following year, on Cardinal Quarracino’s death, he became Archbishop of Buenos Aires; his appointment was at that time welcomed in conservative sectors.

Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 461-466). Kindle Edition.

A champion of the right. What do you know? Three years later, he was a cardinal, and his once-stalled career went into high gear.

For the book, available only as Kindle, go here: https://www.amazon.com/Dictator-Pope-Marcantonio-Colonna-ebook/dp/B077SP6SSR

Says a new book not in the hagiographic mode of some of Francis’ biographers — not specifically Peronist but in the mode of a hardball politico.

A common accusation against Father Bergoglio [now Pope Francis] was to be that he was a divisive figure as Provincial.

Given the state of the Province as he found it, with a party of highly political figures who had been dragging it to disaster, one might think that this was inevitable, or even a good thing; but the reports are that his methods were rather in the direction of exacting loyalty to himself and marginalising those who failed to toe the line.

My way or the highway is too common the way of governance in Latin America, especially in Francis’ native Argentina, where near-cultic loyalty to individuals often holds sway.

From Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 406-409). Kindle Edition.

It’s typical. He’s a schmoozer from a way back and a salesman. They had a good conversation, says the new man.

via Alabama Democrat Doug Jones: Trump ‘gracious’ in congratulatory call | Chicago Sun-Times

Our state is a very big LOSER!

The Prairie State lost a record $4.75 billion in adjusted gross income to other states in the 2015 tax year, according to recently IRS data released. That’s up from $3.4 billion in the prior year. Many of the migrants were retirees who often flock to balmier climes. But millennials accounted for more than a third of the net outflow in tax returns.

While Florida with zero income tax was the top destination for Illinois expatriates, the Illinois Policy Institute notes that Illinois lost income and people on net to all of its neighbors—Wisconsin (6,000 people based on claimed exemptions), Indiana (8,200), Iowa (1,900), Missouri (2,000) and Kentucky (1,100). What’s the matter with Illinois?

Escaping to Wisconsin has new meaning.

via Illinois Drives People Away – WSJ

Theirs is a deeply religious experience.

Writing last May in FEE (“Trump Defiles the Sanctity of Government, and It Drives the Center-Left Mad“) Jeffrey A. Tucker presented a very interesting and compelling explanation for why Trump has enraged the center-left more than probably any politician or president in history — he has defiled the essential holiness of Big Government, which is the sacred religion of the progressive left. Here’s a condensed version of Jeffrey’s article:

It’s how they fill the emptiness of or  empty cracks in their lives. If the small-gummint party thinks business — job creation, getting on with one’s life — is the nation’s business, the left thinks it’s politics.

For them it’s the air in the football, the water in the rivers, the food in the belly. They hate Trump, who

. . .  is not actually cutting back on the size of the state; he is doing something even more terrifying from the center-left point of view: he is ruining the mystery of the state, and thereby discrediting their holy institutions.

He must be stopped. Hence the Madame Defarge-like refrain, Resist!

They are losing their minds.

[He] is everything that the center-left fears most, a person who works, despite himself, to discredit the thing they love the most. He has demoralized them beyond consoling. Now we are seeing talk of impeachment. This seems to be some people’s last hope for saving the old faith.

via Jeffrey Tucker on Trump enraging the center-left by defiling the sanctity of Big Government, the sacred religion of the progressive left – AEI

True enough, but:

The good news, the Wall Street Journal points out in its editorial this morning, is that Judge Moore won’t be available for Democrats to make an issue of during the battle for control of the Senate.

The GOP has a better chance to expand its majority than it would have had Judge Moore won.

Better still if it gets its jobs-and-growth tax bill passed before [incumbent Republican] Senator [Luther] Strange retires to Alabama.

This glass may be half full.

via After Roy Moore – The New York Sun

It gets in the way of peace-making, he says. I did not know that, and I’ve been a Catholic longer than he has.

via On Evangelization and Mission, Should We Listen to Jesus (and the Church of All Time) or The Novelties of Bergoglio? – OnePeterFive