A Coup in the Vatican?

Pope Benedict XVI unexpectedly resigned the Papacy on February 11, 2013, effective on 28 February. He relinquished the Papacy because age-related problems prevented him from fulfilling the arduous role of Pope. During his retirement, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI – the title bestowed on him after his resignation – did not comment further upon the reasons for his hasty departure. He died on December 31, 2022. It had been nearly six hundred years since Pope Gregory XII resigned on July 4, 1415, to end the Western Schism of competing Popes.

In a recent article, Claudio Resta, an Italian philosopher and polymath, has speculated that the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI may not have been entirely voluntary. Instead, his article suggests that the resignation may have been the result of a ‘Catholic Spring’ in 2013.[1] Specifically, he wonders whether global political, financial and commercial interests organised a coup against the Pope, who consequently had little choice but to resign. Resta’s riveting article unpacks the alleged coup, involving the Vatican Bank, known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), among others. Resta provides his readers with a circumstantial case which is certainly worth exploring.

Pope Francis replaced Pope Benedict XVI who, as a conservative, “fought against the prevailing Relativism” and would never “have prostrated himself to the “world” (and to globalism”).[2] In contrast, Pope Francis is not averse to championing globalist left-wing causes, some of which challenge the basic doctrines of the Church and have sharply divided Catholics throughout the world. For example, it was recently reported that Pope Francis waded into the contentious American election by suggesting that, although both candidates are anti-life, electors should vote for the lesser of the candidates’ two evils: one who champions abortion and the other who fights illegal immigration. In this context, the current Pope has indicated that the removal of immigrants is inhumane and unchristian.[3] His electoral comments are likely to rankle conservative Catholics, especially those who value the right to life – still unquestionably official Vatican doctrine.

Since the resignation of Pope Gregory XII all those centuries ago, the Catholic Church enjoyed enormous success. It can be rightly said that the Church is the first global organisation with half a million churches, missions, and offices worldwide and over 1.3 billion followers. The Catholic Church survived the conquistadores’ conquest of South America and the expansion of its earthly influence following the discovery of North America by Christopher Columbus, and it survived well-documented sleazy activities, such as the ‘ratlines’ responsible for smuggling former Nazi members to Latin America.

Since its founding on June 27, 1942, the IOR has managed churches’ finances and property used in the religious mission of the Church and its charities. The IOR has had its share of scandals, and has been accused of money laundering, corruption and bribery, and connections to organised crime. Of course, other banks have also engaged in similar activities, and although many of these banks have been fined, they were never suspended from the SWIFT payment system.

SWIFT is a company, registered in Belgium, that settles financial transactions between more than 10,500 banks worldwide. SWIFT provides safe and secure financial transactions for its member banks. It assigns each member institution a unique ID code (a BIC number) that identifies the bank’s name and the country in which it is located, city, and branch. Essentially, it is an important financial messaging system that covers half of global transactions without which it would be challenging, if not impossible, to make daily payments between companies, organisations, and individuals. SWIFT has also facilitated the imposition of economic sanctions on Iran, Russia, and Belarus by removing these countries from its payment system.

It may have faded from the world’s collective memory that on January 3, 2013, the IOR – the Vatican Bank – was briefly suspended from the SWIFT system, ostensibly because it had failed to implement anti-money laundering legislation. The suspension created chaos within the Vatican because, as the bank was cut off from the messaging’s system, it became impossible to make payments, to use cash machines, and to receive money.

Apart from Resta’s article, we could not find any investigative (as opposed to merely descriptive) reporting on this event. It is, however, certain that soon after IOR’s suspension from the SWIFT payment system, Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation.  Interestingly, the day after the announcement of his abdication, but before the election of the new Pope, SWIFT reinstated the Vatican Bank’s payment rights. Was this a coincidence? Most probably, we will never know. However, we can conclude that for the period between January 3 and February 12, 2013, the Vatican was treated as a rogue state, just like Iran, Russia, and Belarus today, and financially cut off from the rest of the world.

Is there a sordid story behind the Pope’s resignation, as suggested by Resta’s article? Pope Benedict XVI’s private secretary, German Archbishop Georg Gänswein, speaking to parishioners at the Sacred Heart Parish in Carnovali, Bergamo on 6 January 2024, certainly sought to debunk conspiracy theories behind the historic resignation. He recalled how Benedict told him he “no longer had the physical and psychological strength” to fulfil his responsibilities.[4]

However, Resta suggests in his article that the SWIFT timeline may have contributed to the Pontiff’s decision to resign. He refers to leaked email communications, published by Wikileaks in 2023, according to which Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and John Podesta allegedly discussed the regime change in the Vatican and lamented the Vatican’s ‘dictatorship of the Middle Ages’. George Soros is the founder of the Open Society Foundations, which is active in more than 120 countries “using grant-giving, research, advocacy, impact investment, and strategic litigation to support the growth of inclusive and vibrant democracies.”[5] Further, The New American reported that “Podesta, a longtime Clinton advisor/confidant and handpicked star activist of left-wing financier George Soros, revealed in a 2011 email that he and other activists were working to bring about a ‘Catholic Spring’ revolution”.[6]

We can only speculate as to whether globalist forces have hastened the removal of the Vatican’s SWIFT accreditation, and its impact, if any, on Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to relinquish the Papacy.

It is, however, uncontroversial that, during Benedict XVI’s reign, the Vatican had a conservative approach to global issues and events and the Catholic Church struggled to retain its conservative doctrines. By contrast, Pope Francis embraced a globalist approach and has steered the Catholic Church towards championing of left-wing causes, such as climate change, has supported “the new compulsory morality” and has stopped being “the moral antagonist that ‘this world’ detests”.[7] This approach has stunned the Church’s followers all over the world.

It is true the Catholic church is an ancient organisation and that some of its practices may be outdated, but it should not be forgotten that this organisation managed to survive for 2000 years and that, during that time, it served as a beacon for over a billion people. Also, there is no moral justification for anyone outside the Church to engineer a Catholic Spring.

True, the evidence pointing to the existence of such a plot is scant, but not totally preposterous.

 

[1] Claudio Resta, ‘2013: the Globalist Coup that took the Catholic Church which deposed the conservative Pope Benedict XVI and substituted him with the globalist Pope Francis’, VT Uncensored Foreign Policy, June 29, 2024, at https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/06/2013-the-globalist-coup-that-took-the-catholic-church/.

[2] See footnote 1.

[3] Flat White, ‘Pope Francis and the ‘lesser evil’: abortion over borders?’, The Spectator Australia, 15 September 2024, at https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/09/pope-francis-and-the-lesser-evil-abortion-over-borders/.

[4] Elise Ann Allen, ‘Benedict’s top aide says ‘gay lobby,’ Vatican bank had nothing to do with resignation’, Crux – Taking the Catholic Pulse, 9 January 2024, at https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2024/01/benedicts-top-aide-says-gay-lobby-vatican-bank-had-nothing-to-do-with-resignation.

[5] At https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/.

[6] William F. Jasper,  Clinton Campaign’s anti-Catholic E-mails: Will Catholic Voters React?,  The New American,  October 14, 2016, at https://thenewamerican.com/us/culture/faith-and-morals/clinton-campaign-s-anti-catholic-emails-will-catholic-voters-react/.

[7] See footnote 1.