Rome – The Silere non possum investigation into Communion and Liberation continues. By now, this is work of an almost historical character: analysis, explanation, and publication of the documents that helped to create a climate that has become unbearable within the movement. In the meantime, we keep reporting what is happening in these weeks, because today’s facts consistently confirm what we have been writing for months. For this reason, today we reconstruct a case that occurred last November, which struck a priest of the Archdiocese of Milan linked to the movement. In recent days, new documents have circulated within CL: they were sent to us, and we too have come into possession of them.
The psycho blogs in the service of the powerful
On 10 November 2025 a blog - one of the usual ones, steered by the familiar factions (in this case, the Right that styles itself traditionalist) to hit first one person and then another - published an article full of rubbish about a priest of the Archdiocese of Milan: Fr Pierluigi Banna. At the Venegono seminary, this priest is described as gentle, a “conciliator by nature”. We tried to contact him to ask about these documents: he preferred not to respond, and in any case seemed surprised that they had circulated.
Via De Notaris: the “restricted council”, Prosperi’s veto, and the line of secrecy
The day after that article was published, Tuesday 11 November 2025, at 5 p.m., at the headquarters in Via De Notaris, a confidential meeting took place: an appointment that, generally, happens every Tuesday and coincides with the restricted Presidency Council. Only people chosen directly by the president, Davide Prosperi, take part. That day, besides Prosperi, those present were: Giancarlo Cesana, Fr Stefano Alberto, Francesco Cassese, Emanuele Colombo, Fr Andrea D’Auria, Carmine Di Martino, Fr Francesco Ferrari, Simone Finotello, Marco Melato, Ettore Pezzuto, Cesare Pozzoli, Matteo Severgnini, Fr Emanuele Silanos.
“In the meeting, the entire time was spent discussing the article that appeared on that blog,” explains one of the participants. “Several leaders wanted a stance against the article that appeared on the fascist blog because they wanted to avoid problems with Archbishop Delpini and also because, since what was reported was false, it was clear that this would further exacerbate relations with Fr Pierluigi Banna,” he explains further. “Prosperi, however, placed a firm and clear veto on any initiative that would align the Fraternity in defence of Fr Banna, instead spreading the false claim that Banna’s letters had reached the blog through a leak from the Curia, casting doubts even on people close to the Archbishop, which is an extremely serious matter.” As is evident from the letter - which we publish, instead of limiting ourselves to vague, self-serving references like certain blogs do - on 18 November a meeting took place with Davide Prosperi and Francesco Cassese “to find a gesture that would place our communion back at the centre,” Banna writes. However, the Ambrosian priest specifies in the letter—after reconstructing the case in detail—that he renounced taking any legal action against the blog, in agreement with Cassese and Prosperi (after having consulted the Archbishop of Milan, Msgr Mario Delpini, and the spiritual adviser of the Fraternity, Msgr Ivan Maffeis, Metropolitan Archbishop of Perugia–Città della Pieve and Vice-President of the Umbrian Episcopal Conference).
So, in essence, CL neither wants to distance itself from the false article that appeared on the blog, nor does it allow Fr Pierluigi Banna to do so.
On Friday 2 January, Davide Prosperi and Fr Andrea D’Auria, according to certain prelates in the Vatican, were summoned by the Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin. Obviously, they informed no one about this meeting. The question is: why did Prosperi not inform the Diaconia of this sudden summons? Does he believe he can lead the Fraternity autonomously? We find this same standard in what Silere non possum explained in the latest part of the investigation: both Prosperi and Brugnoli seem to believe they can lead the Fraternity in secrecy, omitting decisive facts and documents and dismissing everything as “secret by the Pope’s will”, when in reality Leo XIV has not asked for any pontifical secrecy regarding anything he told them.
The will to divide in order to govern
On 8 January 2026, when the central Diaconia took place, Prosperi intervened not only by explicitly attacking Silere non possum and the investigation, but—taking advantage of the absence of the ecclesiastical adviser Msgr Maffeis, who was not connected by video—he attacked Fr Pierluigi Banna and maintained that the blog’s claims were true.
The facts: what the blog says, what the papers say
In the article published on this blog—far more inclined to praise Giorgia Meloni than to report ecclesial affairs with seriousness—it was claimed that there would be a “designated heir” and “Carrón’s successor”. This is a narrative put into circulation in recent years by Davide Prosperi and his collaborators in order to demonise Carrón and those considered close to him. These are false statements, not only contradicted by the letters we publish in full today, but also by the facts. When Fr Julián Carrón celebrated his fiftieth anniversary of priestly ordination in Caravaggio, in fact, the little group close to Prosperi went around saying he would found the new movement there. And this, obviously, did not happen, because Carrón has no intention whatsoever of founding a new movement, nor of designating any successor. After all, as is well known, these pseudo blogs are the receptacle for all the false information that some people—who knows why always with the same political interests (one has to wonder why politics has never wanted them, sic!)—want to put into circulation, especially to the detriment of priests. If you look, their articles ooze considerations about priests and bishops that lack not only the bare minimum of charity, but even any adherence to the truth. The priest, however, is the easiest target for these slanderers, who brandish “tradition” against everyone, even against the Church itself.
Banna, in these letters, writes it clearly: “First of all, it is clear that there have never been absurd appointments of successors, self-proclamations, candidacies, or power struggles.” And he explains that on another blog—one run by another figure who for years wrote about Vatican backroom plots and, in recent years, began to spread conspiracy theories against Pope Francis—already in 2022 a person, hidden behind a pseudonym, had “proclaimed” Banna as Carrón’s successor, without any foundation, eight months after Carrón’s resignation. Moreover, Banna also refers to Facebook pages which—always with countless posts against the Pope (not only Francis, but today also against Pope Leo)—systematically write in favour of Davide Prosperi, and at the same time spread all these falsehoods, such as the claim that Banna would be Carrón’s successor and that they would want to found a new movement.
Some considerations for those who can think
Now, in the light of what Silere non possum wrote in the latest instalment of the CL investigation and of what we have already said about the editorial line of this news portal, two clarifications must be made that seem pointless, but are not.
On the one hand, we have pseudo blogs that obsessively deal with politics, morality, sex, and attack the Prefects of Dicasteries - such as Cardinal Fernández - with vulgar and slanderous terms; psycho blogs that write under pseudonyms or whose “editors” pontificate about letters they have never read in full. They offer a view of things that has been handed to them by whoever feeds them. And it is only natural to wonder who could ever have spoken to them about these documents, considering that these emails and letters were known to very few people in the group to whom they were addressed, including Davide Prosperi. Who knows: we truly would not know what to think.
On the other hand, there is a news portal known for having brought to light cover-ups such as the case of Marko Ivan Rupnik, for having shed light on murky affairs such as that of the Bose community, and for having made public hundreds of documents on the corruption that existed in the Vicariate of Rome. This portal has a director, moreover well known, and it shows the documents: it does not offer outlandish reconstructions fuelled by hearsay. Now, in light of this, one must ask: which reality can one rely on? On those who show you the documents, or on those who talk about them while writing nonsense? There: it would be enough to answer this to understand how things stand. That said, we move on.
Wounding communion and targeting people
In the letter, Banna also denies the idea that he “put himself forward as an alternative point of reference” at a dinner; on the contrary, he reconstructs that meeting as an invitation to unity and to the cessation of divisive attitudes, not as a candidacy or an internal counter-position. If it were not clear, the letter makes it plainly evident that Fr Pierluigi Bannahas for some time been searching for a point of encounter on matters for which, in reality, he should have sued those who are defaming him. Rather than suing, however, he has chosen every possible avenue to arrive at a confrontation and to explain to people who have responsibilities within the movement that they cannot allow themselves to go around defaming him.
It is a dynamic typical of sick communities and movements: people live on hearsay, they “warn”, they instil fear, they feed rumours and suspicions, until the ecclesial body becomes poisoned. The San Carlo Fraternity, according to many testimonies, has long been fuelled by this same dynamic. Massimo Camisasca consistently applies the same script towards those identified as an “enemy”, and also towards those who, after being exalted and kept close, are then crushed the moment they risk overshadowing him. It is for this reason, and above all because of what happened at the former Holy Office some years ago, that he no longer wanted to send priests to the Holy See. There have been a few exceptions, which have very precise explanations.
The same treatment has been reserved for those who have distanced themselves from him or left the Fraternity because of the evident internal criticalities. And an analogous mechanism seems to be reproduced today also in Communion and Liberation, where—de facto—the priests who are most accredited and “spent” come precisely from the San Carlo orbit. It is a method that recalls sectarian drifts: the Carthusian Dysmas De Lassus explains it lucidly; when a person does not fit the scheme, the machine of defamation, marginalisation, and the circulation of false rumours is activated. Dynamics that, unfortunately, are found in more than one movement when community life slips towards forms of control and systematic delegitimisation.
It is a pathology that Pope Francis denounced many times and that Leo XIV also reproved in his greetings to the Roman Curia. “Let us do as Jesus does: let us share, let us bear one another’s burdens, instead of gossiping and destroying”; and again: “gossip is a plague,” Bergoglio urged. And yet, also thanks to these blogs—recently recalled even by Cardinal Fernández—within the Church one ends up cultivating a continuous, systematic delegitimisation of one person against another. The gravity increases when the target is a priest or a bishop: there, malicious talk does not only erode personal reputation, but corrodes trust and poisons communion.
Asking for help is not a fault
And the fact that a priest turns to his bishop - let us recall that Banna is incardinated in the Archdiocese of Milan, not elsewhere - to ask to be protected in his good name is the bare minimum. Precisely because today - and we saw it with the case of Bishop Guido Gallese - there are plenty of people who defame priests and bishops in the conviction that these, out of Christian charity, must not defend themselves. And such behaviours make life impossible for the priest, but they also make the climate unbreathable within the Christian community.
A further misleading element lies in labelling the initiative as a “complaint”, or worse as a “formal notice” and a “threat” of recourse to an ecclesiastical tribunal “agreed” with the Curia. And here, even on the level of basic logic, one has to ask: where would the scandal be, if a person who suffers an unlawful act turns to the competent authority? It is the usual posture of those who, instead of measuring themselves against the facts, prefer to ridicule the victim: a reflex typical of a fascistoid mentality, the same one that, sotto voce, whispers “you were raped? in the end you were asking for it”.
That said, however, the point is far more serious: here we are not even in the presence of a complaint, but of a simple request to the Ordinary to ensure protection, and a reconciliation. The reference to the code serves exactly this: to clarify that good name is not a whim nor an invented sensitivity, and that gossiping and spreading falsehoods are not only a sin, but also an offence. Banna, in fact, does not cobble together a spiritual sermon—probably because he knows well that, for those who act by subterfuge and calumnies, “God” often remains a slogan to be displayed in the much-declaimed triad of some Prime Minister and nothing more—but he recalls the norms and explains what Church law provides. The goal, and anyone who reads the letters realises it without effort, is reconciliation, not conflict. The conflict, if anything, is fuelled by those who show up at meetings of this level “shrugging” as if it were “no big deal”, pretending not to understand that a Chancellor and an Archbishop exercise real authority and are laying bare the gravity of what you are doing with your tongue. And as if that were not enough, he even goes so far as to prompt the director of the friendly blog—who also participates in his “school of community”—to package an article. This is not only hypocritical: it is extremely serious.
While the article dismisses that appointment as a useless meeting—presumably because this is the reading suggested to it by those who took part with that spirit—Banna, in his letters, describes it as a serene confrontation, intended to open the way to a substantial reconciliation.
Towards the Truth?
On 5 February a meeting is scheduled on this case and Fr Pierluigi Banna has sent a letter to the Presidency Council of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation to report how the facts actually unfolded. We nevertheless consider it useful to publish this documentation as well, together with what we have already made public and what we will still publish, so that those who belong to CL and are living through authentic disorientation - finding themselves before a governance that tells untrue things, keeps secrecy over decisive matters and, at the same time, sees documents emerge that contradict the narratives pushed in these years - can form an idea that is founded and not manipulated. This healthy part of Communion and Liberation, which is the majority, has the right to understand that the lust for power insinuates itself everywhere; but this does not authorise throwing away the experience, the Church, and the charism of Fr Giussani. The actions that some people carry out solely to advantage themselves are not the Church. One must remain steadfast in the faith and trust the lived experience, not the artificial narratives that some try to circulate.
fr.M.S., G.C. and M.P.
Silere non possum