Cardinal Danneels Admits: “Mafia Club” Opposed to Benedict XVI Plotted Pope Francis Election

The election Pope Francis was the fruit of secret meetings that radically liberal cardinals and bishops, organized by Carlo Maria Martini, held for years at St. Gall in Switzerland. This is what is claimed by Jürgen Mettepenningen and Karim Shelkens, the authors of a just published biography of the Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels.

The book reveals that the Cardinal was a regular member of a secret pressure group of Churchmen that opposed Pope Benedict XVI. Danneels said that what was officially but discreetly labeled “the Sankt-Gallen group” was referred to by its members as “the Mafia”. Its self-imposed aim was to achieve a drastic reform of the Church, to make it “much more modern”, and for Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to head it.

The group met every year since 1996, and together they organized the secret “resistance” against Cardinal Ratzinger, who at that time was the right-hand man of John Paul II. Their goal at the time was to elect a “reformer” pope to eventually replace John Paul II, in view of his nearing death, and to prevent at all costs the election of Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope. The question that was put more and more emphatically by the group was: “What after John Paul II? How can we avoid Ratzinger as Pope?’”

When Pope John Paul II died in 2005, the group already pushed the present Pope to the fore, although in the end, Cardinal Ratzinger still got elected despite their efforts. Eight years later, in 2013, they finally got what they wanted, with Pope Francis re-shaping the Church according to their original vision.

The group counts amongst its members the most radically liberal bishops and cardinals of the Church, such as Cardinal Walter Kasper, Cardinal Karl Lehmann from Germany, Cardinal Achille Silvestrini from Italy, Dutch Cardinal Adriann Van Luyn, Cardinal Basil Hume from England, and the late Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini.

Said Schelkens in an interview this week: “The election of Cardinal Bergoglio was prepared in Sankt-Gallen, without doubt. And the main lines of the program the Pope is carrying out are those that Danneels and Co were starting to discuss more than ten years ago.”