By Tom Horn & Cris Putnam
Most
people are probably unaware that in addition to the Secrets of Fátima, a second,
most renowned Marian apparition
from La Salette, France, which was approved by Popes Pius IX and Leo
XIII, revealed analogous information about a crisis of faith that would
transpire within Roman Catholicism in the last days, during which Rome would
become the seat of the Antichrist.
Delivered
to Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud on September 19, 1846, while they tended
cattle in the mountains, the Secret of La
Salette reads in part:
The earth will be struck by calamities of all kinds (in addition to
plague and famine which will be wide-spread). There will be a series of wars
until the last war, which will then be fought by the ten Kings of the
Antichrist, all of whom will have one and the same plan and will be the only
rulers of the world. Before this comes to pass, there will be a kind of false
peace in the world. People will think of nothing but amusement. The wicked will
give themselves over to all kinds of sin…this will be the hour of darkness. The
Church will suffer a terrible crisis… Rome will lose the Faith and become the
seat of the Antichrist… The Church will be in eclipse, the world will be in
dismay.[i]
In
The Plot Against The Pope; Coup dé’tat in
the Conclave–1958, Gary Giuffré discusses how French Masonic influences who
had infiltrated the Catholic clergy in the 1800s were working overtime to
suppress and discredit the Secret of La Salette, even though its message had
been officially favored by two popes. This was because at that time, prophetic
references to Rome “becoming the seat of Antichrist” was forming a common
eschatology among Catholic scholars like Cardinal Henry Manning (discussed
elsewhere in this book), Bishop Salvator Grafen Zola, and Frederick William
Helle, who saw in these predictions the work of Masonically infested clergy who
plotted the overthrow of the papacy and the use of the Church as a political
vehicle for an occult World Order. “These kinds of details, found in the
genuine, modern-day, Marian prophecies, would always generate the greatest
opposition from the Church’s enemies who had infiltrated her structures,” wrote
Giuffré. “For they threatened to expose the satanic plot and long-time goal of
the Masonic Lodge’s agents in the Vatican, to usurp and control the papal
chair.”[ii]
And
it has to be remembered that the specter of infiltration of the Roman Catholic
hierarchy by members of Freemasonry’s luciferian “light bearers” was a fairly
well-established agenda historically, one which Pope Pius IX called the
“Synagogue of Satan.” Pope Leo XIII went so far as to issue a damning encyclical
(Humanum Genus) on April 20, 1884 against the efforts to invade and corrupt
Roman Catholicism by Freemasons, and yet Leo’s own Secretary of State, Cardinal
Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro was later identified as a secret Freemason of the
diabolical Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) sect of whom Satanist Aleister Crowley
belonged and later became leader. When Pope Leo passed away in 1903, it was
widely anticipated that Rampolla would replace him as pope, and Rampolla did
receive the early votes during conclave. Then something extraordinary happened,
and the balloting was interrupted when Prince Jan Maurycy Paweł Puzyna de
Kosielsko, a Polish Roman Catholic Cardinal from Kraków, rose on behalf of his
Sovereign, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, and shocked the assembly by
declaring in Latin, “…officially and in the name and by the authority of
Franz-Josef, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, that His Majesty, in virtue
of an ancient right and privilege, pronounces the veto of exclusion against my
Most Eminent Lord, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro.”[iii]
This
Jus Exclusivæ (“right of exclusion”
or papal veto) was an ancient rule of order claimed by Catholic monarchs to veto
a candidate for the papacy. “At times the right was claimed by the French
monarch, the Spanish monarch, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Emperor of
Austria. These powers would make known to a papal conclave, through a
crown-cardinal, that a certain candidate for election was considered
objectionable as a prospective Pope.”[iv]
It has since been suggested by some historians that the alert Emperor Franz
Joseph knew something of Rampolla’s masonic connection and saved Rome from
usurpation. It is also noteworthy that the official Liber LII Manifesto of the
O.T.O. BAPHOMET XI° does indeed list Cardinal Rampolla among its
members.[v]
But was Rampolla just one of many covert Masons? The answer to that question
appears to be yes according to
experts like the late Canadian naval officer, author, and popular lecturer
William James Guy Carr. In addition to his accounts of wartime activity as a
Navigating Submarine Officer during World War One, Carr—though a conspiracy
theorist—was a noted authority on the history of the Illuminati and its
connection to Freemasonry. He chronicled the movement from its founding in 1776
by Adam Weishaupt to its purported penetration of the Vatican. In 1959, Carr
published The Red Fog Over America,
in which he said:
Weishaupt boasted that the Illuminati would infiltrate into the Vatican
and bore from within, until they left it nothing but an empty shell… Since I
exposed certain events which indicate that agentur of the Illuminati have
infiltrated into the Vatican, I have received a number of letters from priests
who have studied in the Vatican… Those who wrote assured me that the fears I
express are more than well founded. One priest informed me that the Pope was
surrounded by picked “Specialists”, “Experts” and “Advisors” to such an extent
that he was little better than a prisoner in his own palace. Another priest
informed me of the eternal surveillance exercised over the Pope…those who
maintain the surveillance…give him no freedom of action even in the privacy of
his own chambers. The priest said ‘Those who exercise this surveillance are all
hand-picked members of a certain order and they all come from the same
institution…where Weishaupt…conspired.’”[vi]
Carr’s
description matches so closely to what Malachi Martin and similar priests have
alleged on different occasions concerning a formidable Illuminati-Masonic group
inside the Vatican that it is tempting to believe Malachi himself may have been
one of Carr’s informants. But was this Illuminated council the unseen hand in
Rome that “forced” Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) and Cardinal Bertone to
issue what Antonio Socci thought was astuzia inganno (cunning deception) at
Fátima? And would this indicate both the current pope and his Secretary of State
are clandestinely committed to, or being forced to go along with, the
overarching scheme of a secret order inside the Holy See?
The solidarity between Pope Benedict and Cardinal Bertone goes
back a long way and it certainly appears to have continued—at least for the
first few years of Benedict’s papacy—in the time following the “Message of
Fátima” controversy. After being elected pope in April, 2005 and taking his
place as successor of John Paul II as Sovereign of the Vatican City State and
leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Ratzinger as “Pope Benedict XVI” quickly
appointed Cardinal Bertone to replace Fátima co-conspirator Angelo Sodano as the
Cardinal Secretary of State. On April 4, 2007, Benedict also appointed Bertone
as his Camerlengo to administrate the duty of the Pope in the case of a vacancy
of the papacy. Benedict has since made decisions that indicate Bertone could be
(or once was) his choice for successor, and both men have at times appeared to
be stacking and massaging the Red Hats in Bertone’s favor for the next (final?)
conclave. This was noted in the May 13, 2011 National Catholic Reporter article, “A
Triptych on Benedict’s Papacy, and Hints of What Lies Beyond,” when NCR Senior
Correspondent John L. Allen Jr. spoke of the shake-up inside the Roman Curia
(the Curia is the administrative apparatus of the Vatican and, together with the
pope, the central governing body of the Catholic Church) in which Italian
Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu was appointed the Substitute for General
Affairs by Pope Benedict XVI. Becciu, who replaced Archbishop Fernando Filoni
for the job, seemed at first an odd selection to Vatican insiders. “Given how
difficult it is to master the role [of Substitute], many observers found it
curious that Filoni would be shipped out after less than four years, to be
replaced by someone in Becciu who has no previous experience at all working
inside the Vatican,” observed the NCR.[vii] But then the nail was hit on the head when the news service added,
“When the dust settles, the most obvious beneficiary of these moves would seem
to be Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State, who will not
have to be concerned about the new substitute forming a rival center of
power.”[viii]
The job of the Substitute for General Affairs has
been described as the most complicated and demanding responsibility in the Roman
Curia due to the staggering amount of concerns the Substitute must carry on a
daily basis. Roughly compared to a White House Chief of Staff, the Substitute
meets with the Pontiff usually once per day to administer Vatican affairs and
also regularly reports to the Cardinal Secretary of State (currently Cardinal
Bertone). The organizational “success or failure of a papacy often rests on his
shoulders,” adds the NCR. And those who have handled the office well over the
years “have been the stuff of legend: Giovanni Battista Montini, for instance,
was the substitute under Pius XII from 1937 to 1953, and went on to become Pope
Paul VI; Giovanni Benelli, who was Paul’s own substitute from 1967 to 1977, was
widely understood to be the power behind
the throne” (emphasis added).[ix]
Of
course, just when we thought it couldn’t get any more obvious, another—and this
time unprecedented—move to consolidate his power (and which also raises the
question of a third contender for the throne of St. Peter) was made by Bertone
himself. It followed the October 24, 2011, document,
“Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the
Context of a Global Public Authority,” which
amounted to a call by the Vatican for a World Political and Financial Authority.
Published by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which is headed by
Cardinal Peter Turkson, the media was quick—inside and outside Christianity—to
see the dark side of socialism raising its head, not to mention prophetic
implications of the paper’s call for a Global Authority seated inside the United
Nations. In a different chapter we explain how
this new unsettling directive attempts to devise a “moral” mandate for
establishing “a global public authority” and “a central world bank” that would
oversee individual and world pecuniary institutions through subjugation to a new
global power made “at the cost of a
gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world
authority and to regional authorities” (emphasis added).[xii] The
document was addressed at the 2011 G20 Summit in Cannes in comments by President
Barack Obama and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, but nothing came of it there
due to what Cardinal Bertone did just ten days later. And this is where things
start getting interesting, as some soothsayers were already predicting that the
author of the document, Peter Turkson of Ghana (Peter the Roman?) could be the
next pope, as he is considered papabile by the College of Cardinals.
Following the election of America’s first black president in
Obama, analysts around the world began speculating that perhaps Rome would
follow suit and roll out the red carpet for a black pope, the first in fifteen
hundred years, in somebody like Turkson. Cardinal Francis Arinze, whom Ronald L.
Conte Jr. believes will be the next pope and fulfill “The Prophecy of the Popes”
by taking the name Pius XIII, is also a black man, an Igbo Nigerian considered
papabile since before the 2005 conclave that elected Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope
Benedict XVI). “The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American US
President could pave the way for the election of [a] black Pope, according to a
leading black American Catholic,” wrote the Times Online in 2008. “Wilton Daniel
Gregory, 60, the Archbishop of Atlanta, said that in the past Pope Benedict XVI
had himself suggested that the election of a black pontiff would ‘send a
splendid signal to the world’ about the universal Church.”[xiii] The Associated Press
agreed. “The pope has appointed Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana to head the
Vatican’s justice and peace office, a high-profile post that cements his
reputation as a possible future papal candidate… Turkson told reporters there
was no reason there couldn’t be a black pope, particularly after Barack Obama
was elected U.S. president.”[xiv]
Given that Turkson is popular in some circles,
here is how the National Catholic
Reporter heralded the release of his document on Reforming the International
Financial and Monetary Systems in their October 28, 2011, headline: A Papal Contender Grabs the
Spotlight:
Rome saw a striking coincidence this week, which could be either simple
luck or a sign of things to come. There were two big-ticket Vatican news
flashes, Monday’s note on reform of the international economy and Thursday’s
summit of religious leaders in Assisi. In both cases, the same Vatican official
was a prime mover: Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, president of the Pontifical
Council for Justice and Peace.
Turkson, still young in church terms at 63, was the chief organizer of
the Assisi gathering, just as he was the top signatory on the document blasting
“neo-liberal” ideologies and calling for a “true world political authority” to
regulate the economy. During Vatican press conferences to present both, Turkson
was the star attraction each time.
Only a week following the National Catholic Reporter celebration,
however, and only ten days after Turkson released his document calling for a
global financial authority, an emergency summit at the Vatican was called by…you
guessed it…the Secretariat of State—Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. And this time he
wasn’t taking any prisoners. Bertone blasted the document by Turkson and laid
down a new set of laws. From that day forward, he ordered, any new Vatican text
would have to be authorized in advance by himself. The popular Chiesa News in Rome said of the power
play:
Precisely when the G20 summit in Cannes was coming to its weak and
uncertain conclusion, on that same Friday, November 4 at the Vatican, a smaller
summit convened in the secretariat of state… In the hot seat was the [Turkson]
document on the global financial crisis released ten days earlier by the
pontifical council for justice and peace… The secretary of state, Cardinal
Tarcisio Bertone, complained that he had not known about it until the last
moment. And precisely for this reason he had called that meeting in the
secretariat of state. The conclusion of the summit was that this binding order
would be transmitted to all of the offices of the curia: from that point on,
nothing in writing would be released unless it had been inspected and authorized
by the secretariat of state.[xvi]
While
Bertone convinced some Vatican watchers that his overreaching motives had to do
with protecting the Holy See from confusion by claiming that he had been in the
dark and thus side-swiped by the release of the document (a case Chiesa News thoroughly debunked), others
saw in it another giant step in Bertone carefully solidifying his powerbase in
Rome. They also imagined that old enemy the Freemasons having something to do
with it. “It would seem that the dark forces in the Vatican are making their
moves to seize control of the Catholic Church,” wrote Catholic Jew Aron Ben
Gilad. “They are using the recent document of the Pontifical Council of Justice
and Peace on the global financial crisis as the excuse to seize autocratic
control of all the congregations of the curia and putting them under the control
of Cardinal Bertone and the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. Whatever the merits
or demerits of this document is not the important question, but its use as an instrument for
ecclesiastical masonry to take control of the Roman Curia” (emphasis
added).[xvii]
Top Vatican watcher and journalist Andrea Tornielli had stated
as much earlier, documenting how Bertone had been consolidating his influence in
the Vatican:
…through a number of actions: he
appointed bishops who are well known to him and friends in key roles, especially
in positions involving the management and control of the Holy See’s finances.
The last individual appointed, was the Bishop of Alexandria Giuseppe
Versaldinew, to the position of President of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs
of the Holy See… On the other hand, Bertone has done away with prelates who had
moved against him in some way or another, such as Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò,
who had left the Government office to become Nuncio (ambassador) to the United
States, or Bishop Vincenzo di Mauro, who left the Office of Economic Affairs to
become Archbishop of Vigevano.[
