🇮🇹 Versione italiana
Since the election of Leo XIV we’ve been witnessing a communications strategy that mirrors, almost to the letter, the one deployed between 2005 and 2013 against Benedict XVI.
We’ve written about it before and we return to it because it is a systematic, well-orchestrated operation—what one might bluntly call a bona-fide information mafia. Yet behind the media curtain lies something deeper: a knot that goes back to the group of cardinals who engineered the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the so-called St Gallen group. Together with a powerful diplomatic lobby, they pushed for Francis’ rise.
Among their number is Pietro Parolin, summoned back to Rome by Francis after a long mission in Venezuela and made Secretary of State—an office he has filled with a disarming passivity throughout the pontificate, even “sacrificing truth on the altar of hypocrisy” merely to keep a firm grip on power. Orbiting this structure are familiar names: Stefania Falasca, her husband Gianni Valente, Andrea Tornielli, Andrea Monda with his money-soaked family, Paolo Ruffini and others besides. They’re not just minor players on the Vatican fringe, but an organised media lobby whose sole aim is to control and twist communication to their own advantage.
The Bose affair: a textbook case of manipulation
Over the years Silere non possum has learnt first-hand what it means to try to do honest journalism in a system where news is routinely buried by newsdesks. There are countless examples, but the most glaring include those involving Mauro Gambetti, Cardinal Becciu, Enzo Bianchi and the Bose community.
Leaving aside bit-part figures—like Marco Grieco, once a hack for a rag run by the dubious Emiliano Fittipaldi—the way information was managed is telling. Grieco has just resurfaced, banging on about Benedict XVI’s supposed “Prada shoes”—utter nonsense, as the Pope never wore Prada, but it’s hard to explain that to someone so plainly illiterate about Church life. His musings, forged in the Jesuit school, speak volumes.
On Bose he merely copied verbatim into the daily Domani whatever Guido Dotti—infamously caught submitting forged papers to the Piedmont region to secure public grants—dictated to him. Thanks to a Silere non possum investigation, those funds had to be repaid. Needless to say, despite the gravity of it all, the Turin public prosecutor’s office saw no need to act. We see the same atmosphere these days with the Garlasco case: the mindset guiding magistrates and courts is plain for all to see. Back to Bose: one cannot overlook the clout wielded by Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, who shielded Amedeo Cencini and others acting in brazen breach of both canon and civil law.
Vatican reporting in free fall
Small wonder that Vatican News—now dubbed “Andrea Tornielli’s blog” inside the Vatican—hasn’t devoted a single line to any of this. Neither he nor his team thought it worthwhile to report the facts that have emerged, just as happened in the Rupnik affair, where “invisible hands” laboured to smother the truth.
Nor should we forget the opaque, self-referential climate that dominates Italy’s Order of Journalists, locally and nationally. Offences such as failing to cite sources or the deliberate doctoring of news go by unremarked. After all, it’s easier to pocket the annual fee than to enforce the code of ethics.
In this so-called “banana republic” it’s increasingly obvious why in recent years so many independent blogs and news sites have sprung up, often run by people outside the register yet able to offer serious, professional work. Let’s be clear: the register is a tool for controlling information—accepted with startling docility—when journalism ought to be genuinely free, with or without any formal licence.
What, then, is the register for, if not to guarantee professionalism and ethics? Apparently, for control alone. It would make sense were it an active body prosecuting those who peddle fake news, distort reality, fail to cite sources, or steal others’ work—but, as we know, Italy’s Order of Journalists does none of that. On the contrary, we’ve seen well-known cases where some journalists were hounded for purely “politico-ideological” reasons while others, guilty of far worse, went untouched.
It’s worth spelling out: Andrea Tornielli & Co. belong to those lobbies that release only the stories they choose—perhaps serving third-party interests—and do everything possible to block what they dislike. Think of shady tactics like anonymous flagging on social media or YouTube, hoping to wipe bothersome content. It happened with one of our pieces exposing these very dynamics: in Piazza Pia they tried every trick to have it censored. The result, as always with Silere, is that the article gained even more traction and now circulates everywhere in several languages.
Given all this, it’s clear: if this is the system, Silere non possum has become enemy number one—not for some shady reason, but simply because it dared tell the truth, shining a light on incompetence, back-room deals, cringeworthy gaffes and much else. Let’s be blunt: if anyone fears Silere non possum it’s because they’ve something to hide—otherwise they wouldn’t be afraid. The effect is all the stronger considering that, in recent days, a few cut-and-paste hacks fancied they could change things in the Dicastery with an article full of whingeing, just because they weren’t put in the front row at a papal meet-and-greet. The laconic, razor-sharp comment of a well-known curial prelate raised a smile: “No-one reads them even by accident!” And why not? Because they’re ideological, they write only when there’s something in it for them, and they presume to moralise about the clergy while behaving at least as badly as—if not worse than—those they condemn.
Fake narratives
Silere non possum was born out of a concrete observation: the starkly different treatment meted out to Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. With Benedict, non-issues were blown out of all proportion; with Francis, even blatant problems were buried.
For that very reason it’s worth digging into what has happened since the election of Leo XIV. From day one a clear strategy kicked in: censor as much as possible of anything positive about him and cast him in opposition to Francis. Take the Pope’s visit to the Augustinian curia: Vatican News didn’t even run a photo, let alone highlight the story. Everything is presented in a sterile, anonymous, hype-free manner. Yet a quick glance at what Andrea Tornielli wrote on his blogs at the time of Francis’ election shows how every last step of Bergoglio’s was amplified, celebrated, even mythologised. For years Vatican comms has been: “The Pope on the war said…” or “Pope Francis…”. A recent example: this morning’s general audience was boiled down to an appeal on Gaza and Leo XIV’s mention of Pope Francis.
The Pope has been to Genazzano, visited the Dicastery for Bishops, even slept in his flat at the Holy Office… yet Vatican News treated it with the chill of a wire report. The bit about the flat wasn’t reported at all—while when Francis picked Santa Marta, every paper on earth splashed it across the front page.
Salvatore Cernuzio, while Francis lived, could churn out twenty articles a day, often lifted wholesale, ready to gush over any gesture the Pontiff made, however trivial. Andrea Tornielli, too, was ever-present with his editorial columns—useless and unread though they were—to accompany each breath of Bergoglio. But with Francis’ death everything ground to a halt. Nerves were taut, because these vultures were banking on Pietro Parolin’s election.
When Tornielli announced live coverage of “the election of Pius XIV” on YouTube, perhaps he genuinely thought Parolin had taken that name? One “Pius” got lost along the way? We’ll never know. But what is certain is that this lobby pushed one specific line to the media in those hours. Very few cardinals spoke of the Veneto prelate, yet they fed such “absolute truths” to their Vaticanista pals. And since Parolin didn’t make it, his backers immediately pushed the idea that it had been he, no less, who stepped aside in the conclave. Classic textbook move: “He didn’t get elected? Fine, let’s save face. Let’s stop Leo XIV seeing him as a rival or he’ll turf him out of the Third Loggia…” Right now Pietro Parolin has gone to lick his wounds with his great friend Gabriele Giordano Caccia—also singed, for he was poised to take over the Secretariat of State if Parolin had been chosen. But that tale was stoked only by Tornielli & Co. in the papers, always behind the scenes, never fronting up. Because, truth be told—barring a handful of the clueless—the cardinals never seriously considered electing Parolin. Yet some “fake journalist” gladly became the megaphone for these inventions, amplified by slippery octogenarian hacks hosting him in prime time on Italy’s state broadcaster. We’ve said it for ages: the Vatican world attracts the dregs. People who brag of influence, who spin outright lies that—mysteriously—no-one debunks; indeed, they’re allowed to stand as gospel. As you can see, information is utterly manipulated. And especially when the Church is discussed, everything is shoehorned into categories alien to her, namely political ones. People forget the Church is not, and cannot be treated as, a party or ministry. Yet some folk avoid setting foot in political palaces only because they’ve more skeletons in the cupboard than shirts. Naturally, though, we have “big-shot cardinals” ever ready to welcome such characters “in the name of charity”. A very selective, very convenient charity, it seems—indeed, a rather blind one.
The puppet’s defence is over
Another angle worth probing, in line with all of the above, is the unhinged reaction of certain people to Leo XIV’s election. For the past twelve years even Francis scratching his nose was raised to pontifical magisterium; now, on the Facebook pages of professional shouters, one reads: “We’ll see, it’s too early to judge”, “He feels distant”, “That mozzetta—he could’ve spared us”, “He’s not as nice as Francis”, “Francis reached the people”, “I’m already disappointed”, and so on. All of which shows how they never grasped the papacy or the Petrine office. These are the same who attacked Silere non possum, who blasted the cardinals over the dubia, who posed as champions of the Magisterium whenever anyone dared, with respect and devotion, to raise questions—towards the Pope, yes, but distinguishing the man from the office.
True love for the Pope does not hinge on temperament, selfies, camera-friendly hugs, but on different concerns: his love for the Church, affection for priests, capacity to smile in hiddenness and not only in public, his genuine willingness to listen, his fidelity to his predecessors’ teaching and the Church’s doctrine. These are what have stirred thousands of priests, bishops and cardinals in recent years. And people have long asked how the public could label as “kind and likeable” a man who looked perpetually scowling, with a hardened gaze even during Mass—whereas Benedict XVI, pilloried as the “German Shepherd”, was never seen pouting or glaring. We could draw a domestic parallel with the Garlasco case: public opinion utterly manipulated by the press. And the press is often run by ignoramuses and functional illiterates, guided by feelings, who do not read documents, speak to the people involved, or frequent the places where events unfold—yet they pontificate for hours in TV parlours and newspaper columns.
Thus, if some illiterate hack feels someone is “cold, icy, distant”, she turns him into a culprit—murderer, if need be—without evidence, purely on subjective impression. The same kicks in when the Pope is German, shy, reserved: suddenly he’s the “nasty watchdog of the doctrine of the faith”. Is this the sort of reporting you want? Can Catholics really tolerate the Church’s narrative being handled by such people?
Sweeteners for journalists
It’s obvious they’ve gone on the attack with every means, digging out the most far-fetched dirt on Leo XIV—we’ve reported it already. Yet no-one wonders why, the day Pope Francis popped back to the Domus Pauli VI to collect his belongings, a journalist managed to snap a high-resolution shot, still online free of charge. Or why, when the Pope visited a record shop, the Spanish hack Javier Martínez-Brocal just happened to be there, camera poised. The very same Brocal who, surprise surprise, shortly afterwards enjoyed the exclusive of an interview with Bergoglio, leading to a book clearly pitched as a venomous reply to Benedict XVI’s secretary. A book that, in effect, traduced him. But of course, no-one breathed a word.
Whatever the mis-timed or ill-tempered remarks in Archbishop Georg Gänswein’s Nothing but the Truth, nothing in those pages is false; Silere non possum has verified it. Quite another matter is Martínez-Brocal’s book, which contains opinions you’d never expect from a Pope—and objectively false claims to boot.
And what did we already tell you in that article? Classic do ut des: “You take the snap pretending to pass by, the image makes every international tabloid, and I’ll know how to repay you.” So it was. The photo—Pope in a record shop—went round the world under headlines like “The Pope pops into music store”. Not long after, Martínez-Brocal gained privileged access to Santa Marta to craft his “exclusive” on Francis and Benedict.
So why does Silere non possum so upset certain circles? It’s simple: because it tells the truth. Because it lays bare the wheeler-dealer mechanisms long managed in silence. Because it has never cut deals with these people, even when some of them approached us seeking “special treatment”. Now the very same characters claim they still need to “evaluate” the new Pope. Evaluate on what basis, pray? Who do they think they are? Does the Pope have to please them? And if he doesn’t, out come the Facebook posts, slagging him off for not ordaining women or peddling baseless hints of abuse cover-ups. Maybe, then, we weren’t the problem. We never questioned Pope Francis’ legitimacy, never wrote untruths. We never said “He’s not the Pope” or “We won’t accept him because we don’t like him”. We criticised—yes—but respectfully, and always on the human level of his choices, often coloured by temperament, impulsiveness, or advisors of notoriously dubious leanings. But we never dreamt of rejecting his authority. Indeed, precisely because we acknowledged that authority, we worried about how it was exercised. For his decisions—even the bad ones—affected us all. We have never idolised the Pope. We didn’t do it yesterday and won’t do it today. We know well the Pope is central, called to safeguard the Church’s unity—or should be—but what truly matters is Jesus Christ. And it is to Him that we want to be led. We’re not fussed about pleasing newsroom editors, only that the Pope leads us to Christ. Some have asked these days: how could certain Catholics gush over a Pope who spurned the Apostolic Palace, whilst now remaining unmoved by Leo XIV’s genuine tears as he looks at the fisherman’s ring, conscious of the weight of the ministry he has received? Let’s not forget the painstaking work Tornielli & Co. did to bury, minimise or erase certain objectively embarrassing moments of Pope Francis: the slap to the Chinese pilgrim, the casual use of crude terms like “frociaggine” (faggotry), the sexist jibes to women and priests… All hushed up, relativised, vanished like soap bubbles. We’re moved by other things: by men who, in humility, bend to the Church’s will and do not toy with the things of God. Men who do not confuse their own will with that of the Church, who do not twist the Gospel to suit themselves but allow themselves to be shaped by it.
How Benedict XVI was treated
Today, one month after Francis’ death, Pope Leo XIV recalled him at the general audience—a gesture of respect and charity. Yet we remember an earlier fact: in February 2023, during his trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pope Francis never once mentioned Benedict XVI, not even before bishops deeply attached to Ratzinger. Silence, too, can speak volumes.
No need to rehearse everything Silere non possum documented in the days after Benedict’s death: the general audience carried on as if nothing had happened while the Pope’s body lay in the basilica; the disrespect shown him; Francis’ tantrums at Santa Marta; and above all the fact that Bergoglio never went down to pray at his predecessor’s tomb, nor would he attend the interment. Eloquent silence. Quite a different style from Pope Leo XIV. The day he went on pilgrimage to Genazzano he stopped at St Mary Major on the way back to lay a bouquet before the Salus Populi Romani. Andrea Tornielli promptly headlined: “Pope prays at Pope Francis’ tomb.”
Since Leo XIV’s election Tornielli had near-enough gone radio-silent. The only thing he thought fit to write was that—imprecise, if not manipulative. For it’s obvious the pilgrimage’s destination was the Virgin Mary, not the predecessor’s grave. Leo XIV, the gentleman he is, placed a single rose on Francis’ tomb simply because it was there, plucking it from the same bouquet laid before Our Lady, and prayed there too. But because the scavenger lobby had already begun spinning its convenient tale, Leo XIV at once visited St Peter’s tomb, celebrated the Eucharist, and prayed at the tombs of all his predecessors in the Vatican Grottoes.
The message was clear, understated, yet firm: “I’m no personality cultist. All my predecessors merit respect; they are part of the Church’s history. My devotion? Solely to God and the saints. The rest is personality worship—and I don’t do that.”
Pope Leo XIV’s “unscheduleds”
Look closely and one of Leo XIV’s hallmarks is the centrality of prayer. In every so-called “unscheduled” move—yes, there is authentic attention to people, real meetings rather than stage-managed ones—but above all the spiritual dimension is front and centre: prayer always comes first. We saw it at Genazzano with the Augustinians; at their general curia where he celebrated Mass; and at the Dicastery for Bishops, where he said Mass with his former staff. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the recent past. In those years “unscheduleds” looked more like photo-ops for the press, with swarms of journalists and few priests, and prayer or Mass almost never featured. Circulating now is an emblematic video: Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi—another familiar face of the Sant’Egidio community—visits a woman (unidentified) who lives opposite a Perugian’s door. Who she is we don’t know—her mood seems fragile—but her words, and Zuppi’s, speak volumes. The CEI president says “one always obeys the Pope”, yet his tone is tepid, if not subtly critical. The fervour that once fired him has plainly cooled.
So the inevitable question—put also to Cardinal Zuppi—is: “What, exactly, has changed? Have certain subterranean ties, certain informal power dynamics collapsed? Or is the issue something else?” Yes, one obeys the Pope—we’ve always said so too—but there’s a world of difference between obedience lived in enthusiasm and conviction and the cold, formal kind dictated by institutional duty alone. We believe serious reflection is urgent—especially for the clergy—because discerning who is truly loyal to the Church and the Pope (not to the man, but to the office and to Peter’s successor) is a responsibility that can no longer be postponed.
d.P.T.
Silere non possum