🇮🇹 Versione italiana
🇺🇸 First part
Vatican City – There is a story that intertwines with several of the deviations the Catholic Church has experienced in recent years. As Silere non possum has repeatedly pointed out, the tragedy of Pope Francis’s pontificate has been marked, from the outset, by the uncontrolled access of numerous problematic individuals to the Santa Marta residence. Over these twelve years, the Pope’s decision to reside at the Domus has triggered a series of serious issues within the universal Church. Contrary to popular belief, the fact that his predecessors lived in the Apostolic Apartment was not about luxury, but a protective measure: protection for the Pope against the manipulative dynamics of those who, throughout history, have sought to exploit him for their own interests. We have seen this with the Diocese of Rome, with the decisions Bergoglio continued to make regarding Argentina, and so on…
Over the years, all sorts of people have entered Santa Marta: journalists, politicians, young men, friends of friends… A clear and visual confirmation of this decline came on the day of Pope Francis’s death, 21 April 2025, when millions of photos were published featuring him—almost as if he were a film star rather than the Vicar of Christ. This system provided fertile ground for many individuals to pursue their own personal projects and vendettas disguised as good intentions, deceiving a Pope who—willingly or not—never distanced himself from such toxic dynamics. Silere non possum has often denounced the problem of “young men” who gravitate around religious communities and parishes. A striking case is that of the Diocese of Cassino, where a figure with severe mental disorders went so far as to forge letters from the Secretariat of State and now roams Italy wreaking havoc, like a loose cannon. It is exactly in this rotten context that the painful affair involving the Cistercian nuns of San Giacomo di Veglia unfolds.
San Giacomo di Veglia
For fifty-one years, the community was led by Mother Rosaria Saccol, who died in 2021 at the age of 92. Such a long abbacy inevitably allowed certain negative dynamics to fester: for example, the community became a haven for borderline prayer groups, composed of people claiming to “see the Virgin Mary” or reporting other hallucinations linked to false mysticism. Moreover, Mother Rosaria welcomed into the community some women with psychiatric issues documented by medical diagnoses and clinical records. Although well-intentioned, this hospitality proved disastrous over time.
In 2018, the community elected as new abbess Reverend Mother Aline Pereira Ghammachi, a Brazilian nun who had joined the monastery in 2005. At just 34 years old, she found herself leading a community of 26 nuns. Mother Ghammachi comes from a Brazilian family that owns a well-known publishing company. “It wasn’t I who chose the Lord, but He who chose me, when I was 15, giving me a sense of a possible vocation. I attended university, earned my degree, and then asked myself how I could be at His service. My spiritual director suggested the cloister here in Vittorio Veneto, where he has three sisters. I arrived in 2005 and truly found an open heart here,” she said in a 2018 interview with Avvenire.
With determination, initiative, and foresight, the new abbess began revitalising the monastery, seeking practical opportunities to ensure a future for the community through work. She launched inclusive projects with gardens for people with disabilities and autism spectrum disorders, and began producing wine and natural creams—activities that enabled the community to support itself without compromising the contemplative and secluded nature of monastic life. In line with requests from some sisters and with the support of Bishop Corrado Pizziolo, Mother Ghammachi also began a necessary internal “cleansing”, removing the pseudo-mystical groups that had infiltrated the community. A courageous choice, which naturally attracted the ire of mentally unstable individuals who had found in the monastery a convenient refuge for their personal delusions.
False accusations, the Calvary begins
In 2022, one such unstable person—unsurprisingly with open access to Santa Marta—delivered an anonymous letter to the Pope alleging serious abuse by the Abbess against her fellow sisters. And, as has increasingly become the norm under this surreal pontificate, even anonymous letters are taken seriously. This practice is routinely applied especially when the accused lacks high-level protection—as opposed to others, such as Carmelite friar Luigi Gaetani.
On 27 January 2023, the Presiding Abbot of the Congregation of Saint Bernard, Dom Stefano Zanolini, O. Cist., informed the Abbess of San Giacomo di Veglia that the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life had appointed Mother Ester Stucchi as “delegate to listen to the Community and to gain a clear and objective understanding of the facts reported in the letter.”
In this letter, seen by Silere non possum, serious accusations are levelled at the superior. She is accused of forcing the nuns to discuss matters of the internal forum with her, thus violating their freedom of conscience. She is also alleged to have pulled the hair of a fellow sister with behavioural vulnerabilities and to have forced her into an involuntary transfer. Additionally, she is accused of denying the sisters access to a spiritual director and of blocking private consultations with psychiatrists. Further charges concern the management of the guesthouse: the Abbess is accused of allocating one wing to her relatives and of entrusting the financial administration of the monastery to her family—suggesting a conflict of interest and misuse of communal resources. She is also accused of lacking financial transparency, not sharing the monastery’s budget with the community, and of neglecting elderly sisters, even mistreating them.
The visit by a third-party, impartial nun
As we have repeatedly emphasised, including in the first article of this investigation, apostolic visits and related inquiries must be entrusted to third parties with no connection to the individuals or institutions under investigation. In this case, the presiding abbot acted correctly by appointing an external nun with no ties to the community of San Giacomo. The religious sister spent time at the monastery, spoke with all the nuns—including those who had previously left to join other Cistercian communities—and arrived at the following conclusions: “At my request to review the bank statements and accounting records, the Mother cooperated with total transparency and without hesitation. The accounts are managed with great order and precision—not only by the Mother, but also with the support of two other nuns, including the Prioress. From my analysis of the documents, no irregularities or suspicious elements emerged. The Monastery is in a strong financial position, and the Mother works continuously to find new means of support. It is not true that the sisters are unaware of the monastery’s financial situation: every year, the Mother presents a detailed report, complete with graphs and tables projected on a large screen, as confirmed by all the nuns I interviewed.” So writes Mother Stucchi in her report submitted to the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. As for the allegation that part of the guesthouse was made available to the Abbess’s family, it should be noted that this claim came—unsurprisingly—from a psychiatric patient previously expelled from the guesthouse by the Mother herself. In those very premises, the individual had conducted alleged mystical encounters and spiritually troubling activities for years. It is obvious to any reasonable person that such a witness is unreliable, but clearly, others had ulterior motives for targeting this community. The accusations regarding the monastery’s financial management were also found to be completely baseless. In her report, Mother Stucchi stated that she was able to thoroughly examine the accounts and financial records, noting not only transparency and order, but also the significant economic support provided by the Abbess’s family. Indeed, the family made several substantial donations and provided numerous services to the nuns free of charge, including transport to medical appointments, the purchase of medicines and food, and other material support. As for the alleged abuse of fellow sisters, the investigation revealed the complete opposite. It was not the Abbess who displayed aggressive behaviour, but a nun referred to in the accusatory letter as “fragile”, who had in fact been diagnosed with schizophrenia, as per prior medical documentation. Similarly, allegations of violations of the internal forum or restrictions on psychiatric consultations without the Mother’s permission were unfounded. Competent professionals—not those trained in questionable environments such as the Gregorian—would never permit such interference. In fact, as confirmed by Mother Stucchi’s investigation, such events never occurred. On the contrary, in one instance, it was the psychiatrist who requested the Mother’s presence for a three-way meeting to clarify accusations raised by the nun in question. The emerging picture is now clear: jealousy, envy and personal grudges fuelled a smear campaign against a respected and capable woman—one whom the Abbot General had once dismissed with a comment as superficial as it was revealing: “Too beautiful and too young to be an abbess.” A serious remark, which says a lot not only about the attitude toward the Abbess, but also about the mentality and (sexist) style of Mauro Giuseppe Lepori.
Abuse of power and amoral familism
As Silere non possum has reported on numerous occasions, within the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, there exists an embarrassingly entrenched system of amoral familism. Well known to all inside the institution, yet rarely denounced. And while in the past José Rodríguez Carballo desired money to resolve matters swiftly and in accordance with certain interests, today the situation has not changed significantly. In the Dicastery, just as in the San Anselmo and Gaetani cases, documents have surfaced and the paperwork clearly shows that something is amiss. A priest states: “At the conclusion of Mother Stucchi’s visitation, after reviewing her report, a decree had been prepared.” Monsignor José Rodríguez Carballo, former Secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, had even drafted a letter addressed to Dom Zanolini, which we now publish exclusively:
“Reverend Father,
In response to your courteous letter of 27 February 2023 informing this Dicastery of the favourable outcome of the apostolic visitation conducted by your delegate, Sr M. Ester Stucchi, osb ap, therefore: ‘as no sufficient evidence has been gathered regarding the guilt of Mother Abbess Aline Pereira Ghammachi, and as the accusations against her have proven unfounded, in accordance with can. 1718 §1 CIC, it is ordered that the present case and all related proceedings be archived, modo iure praescripto.’ With this in mind, Reverend Father, while I thank you for the excellent work carried out in the service of souls, I take this opportunity to greet you in the Lord and wish you Peace and Good.”
However, this letter and the decree were “literally torn up” after Father Mauro Giuseppe Lepori, Abbot General of the Cistercian Order, approached Monsignor Carballo following the usual pattern now typical of Roman Curia dicasteries. Essentially, for the layperson, it is as if a party in a criminal trial privately approached the judge and exerted pressure without the other parties’ knowledge and without any record of the interference appearing in the case file. In Italy, such behaviour could constitute a criminal offence under Article 319 ter of the Penal Code—but in what Lepori erroneously refers to as “the only authority entitled to regulate monastic life”, it is now common practice.
But we will speak more on this later.
p.M.A.
Silere non possum