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In a world that congratulates itself on being free and pluralistic, the international press—and the Vatican press in particular—has morphed into an organized lobby run by a mafia‑style system. A system that not only shapes the narrative but also decides who must be exalted and who will be torn to shreds in the media. The recent words of Pope Leo XIV to the diplomatic corps are the latest glaring example.
“First and foremost,” the Pope declared, “we must invest in the family, founded on the stable union between a man and a woman, ‘a small yet genuine society that predates every civil society.’ No one may shirk the duty to foster contexts that protect the dignity of every person, especially the most fragile and defenseless—from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, whether citizen or immigrant.”
A clear, balanced statement—squarely rooted in Catholic social teaching. Yet the newspapers sang in unison: “Pope closes the door on gay couples. Pope distances himself from his predecessor Francis.” A deliberately manipulative operation, orchestrated to delegitimize the Pontiff by branding him as backward, conservative, divisive. Ester Palma of Corriere della Sera wrote: “He doesn’t mention gay couples the way Francis did.” A false claim, typical of professional distorters, because Francis never spoke of “family” in reference to gay couples.
The Pope—whether Francis or anyone else—can never do so. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “A man and a woman joined in marriage together with their children form a family” (CCC 2202). Such journalistic behavior is nothing new to those familiar with the inner workings of the media circle, where news is excerpted, twisted, and weaponized. That is precisely why Silere non possum was born: to reveal the facts, not the distortions peddled by these people.
Let the mud‑slinging begin
But let us look further. The New York Times, in a flight of fancy worthy of a nineteenth‑century feuilleton, publishes an “investigation” claiming that Salvatore Giovanni Riggitano, an ancestor of the Pope, had an extramarital affair. A wholly irrelevant, farcical tidbit, but handy for throwing mud. Many priests and bishops now ask: Why was there never a line like this about Pope Francis? Why were his gaffes ignored and buried, his statements on abortion, family, euthanasia allowed to drop, while only the sound‑bites journalists liked were amplified? The answer is simple: Pope Francis bent to the system. He was the “selfie‑Pope”—giving TV interviews, writing forewords, granting access and receiving media protection in return. The bargain was clear, and those who refused were frozen out. It is a true mafia system: Give me access, let me make money off my book, grant me the scoop, the interview—then I’ll leave you in peace. This is called “paying the journalistic protection racket.” Casa Santa Marta had become the newsroom of this media batt(u)age. All these years, Silere non possum—one of the few remaining independent channels—has highlighted the glaring gaffes of the Dicastery for Communication. A dicastery granted an audience by the Pope only hours after his election, alongside the journalists who covered the conclave.
That meeting felt like a reckoning: the leadership sensed the wind had shifted. Gestures matter—the Pope refusing selfies, no longer swapping skullcaps like at a marketplace, accepting the directive to keep the “press hyenas” off the stage in the Paul VI Hall, relegating spin‑doctors to the lower tier. The symbolism is powerful and “political”: those who wrecked Church communications must go.
The Tornielli paradigm
Andrea Tornielli epitomizes a certain brand of self‑serving journalism. Although his blog was virtually unknown—ask any priest: everyone knows Silere non possum, almost no one had heard of Tornielli’s blog—he managed to land a Vatican post in 2018, thanks to indirect ties with Pope Francis. Those “pop‑ins” Jorge Mario Bergoglio made to Beniamino Stella at the Academy during the Congregations had to bear fruit eventually. The “Falasca‑Valente‑Tornielli lobby” prospered—and so they waved their handkerchiefs when Cardinal Pietro Parolin walked out of the Sistine Chapel draped in red.
Yet this is the bitter fruit of a Church that, instead of firmly rejecting climbers—Pope Francis’ own term—keeps flinging the doors wide open to them. We have documented countless times the grave misconduct and slanderous maneuvers by Francesco Antonio Grana, yet dubious figures like him still roam freely, with the tacit blessing—or complicit silence—of equally embarrassing grandees like Fernando Filoni or Giovanni Battista Re. To see how Tornielli ran Vatican communications, just reread Silere non possum’s recent exposé: a series of blunders, sloppiness, and personalized use of official channels—so much so that his personal social‑media accounts carried watermarked materials not even found on the Dicastery’s own feeds. A flagrant anomaly—but Francis allowed him everything. Tornielli’s only problem was Silere non possum, which kept pulling skeletons out of Piazza Pia’s closets, driving him mad. “They go berserk when they read what you publish on Silere; they know it’s all true,” one journalist confides.
A case in point: the recent statement by the Cistercian Abbot General—promoted by Tornielli even though it was riddled with lies, already demolished by a meticulous Silere non possum investigation. But Tornielli’s ties to the deviant wing of Communion and Liberation—power‑hungry and influence‑obsessed—outweigh the truth. Nothing new there. Tornielli never even knew who Fr. Giussani was; it was that politicized CL faction that opened doors for people like him. Many within that movement now say: “He’ll lick boots to save himself again.”
Lobbies and the Rupnik affair
As always, when the truth hurts, they silence sources holding documents in hand. Tornielli did it in the Rupnik case: while Silere non possum exposed the scandal with irrebuttable proof, the Dicastery for Communication serenely kept quiet, releasing only reactive statements—never citing sources. They alone went on promoting the work of the defiant ex‑Jesuit artist, even when the rest of the world was dismantling everything. Why? Because Tornielli is “close to abuse victims” only when the abuser is weak, poor, and unprotected. If the abuser is rich, powerful, and well‑connected, he defends him. He’s the classic man who likes to ride the winner’s bandwagon, though Vatican hallway talk about him is far less polite.
At Piazza Pia, anything goes—including the continued presence of the arrogant Nataša Govekar, a loyalist of the Slovenian ex‑Jesuit, parked at the Dicastery under his protection. What she does all day remains a mystery. She is hardly the only over‑paid non‑performer there. The Rupnik saga lays it bare: Tornielli invokes copyright and sources only when it suits him; if he has to work in the shadows—feeding fake news or opening sock‑puppet accounts to spit venom—every code of ethics flies out the window.
What, then, are sites like Vatican News if not personal blogs disguised as institutional channels? Francis allowed it; Leo XIV no longer does. “If you want to know what’s really happening in the Vatican, see the documents and objective reconstructions, you must read Silere non possum,” many ecclesial circles now say. Consider the Cistercian communiqué: Silere’s articles, in various languages, were read by over four million people. Vatican News is read by scarcely more people than the Dicastery’s own staff—and they must click in and out a dozen times to fix the avalanche of errors packed into a single article!
Silere non possum is one of the few reliable sources precisely because, while the “professionals” sold themselves for a press pass, a selfie with Francis, or a by‑line from Santa Marta, those doing real journalism brought documents, evidence, testimonials—not hot air.
A cornered rat bites
The media lobby is a closed, corrupt, rotten system. Narrow the focus to the para‑Vatican world and we are in the circles of hell. These people would kill to get what they want. Lately we have seen certain journalists—aptly described by the editor as “starving freeloaders”—giving airtime to the “Pope’s personal trainer.” When two attention‑seekers team up, the combo is unstoppable.
In the Vatican press room, the right to report is granted only to those who submit to the accreditation blackmail; anyone who tells another story sees their badge revoked, emails ignored, questions censored. It is a mafia system of favors, complicity, revenge. Pier Paolo Pasolini said: “Journalists—all journalists—lie,” not because they can’t tell the truth, but because they won’t. And whoever dares to tell it without permission gets massacred, slandered, discredited—just as Leo XIV is now, guilty of being Pope, acting like a Pope, being Catholic, refusing to do show business, rejecting the pay‑offs of the voracious.
The height of the ridiculous came this week. During the audience granted to journalists who covered the conclave, some whined because they were not placed “in the front row” for the hand‑kiss. Yet the criterion is crystal‑clear: you reward friends of the system—those who sustained and fed the propaganda machine for years. When Silere non possumdenounces the ubiquitous amoral familism, these same people feign indifference. But let the issue touch them and they whimper.
This is the usual keyboard‑warrior reflex: they react only when personally touched and—paradoxically—hurl at us the very accusations they level. They ascribe to us a personal agenda that simply does not exist. Silere non possum has never written or acted for personal gain. We don’t expose Dicastery scandals because we crave accreditation—we never even asked for it. When you despise an environment, you don’t wish to join it. In four years we have told more truth than some “accredited” journalists have in forty. That mindset is not ours—which is precisely what disarms and drives them mad.
Often, when such people speak, they reveal far more about themselves than about others. Take other cronies of Tornielli—he “eggs them on” though they are mocked everywhere—oozing obsession with sex, homosexuality, spouting unspeakable vulgarities. It’s clear they project onto us desires we cannot fulfill. Sorry to disappoint. Charity has its limits.
Back in the Paul VI Hall, we saw Valentina Alazraki and other “famous faces” always in the front row. Why? Because they built personal relationships with the gatekeepers. That is the amoral familism denounced these years—the one sociologist Edward C. Banfield spoke of, though some recognize it only when their own ego is pinched.
Suitcases and one‑way tickets
Reality is: the system is imploding. Everyone knows the Dicastery for Communication’s leadership is at the end of the road. Hence the frantic last shots—trying to destroy whoever won’t bend.
A shrewd cardinal asked this morning: “Why hasn’t an editorial appeared on Vatican News in which the great legal expert Andrea Tornielli speaks of ‘the right words being instrumentalized,’ just as he wrote that ridiculous editorial on due process? Is he a jurist? This time no editorial in defense of the Pope—why not? One wonders who is slipping these talking points to the colleagues. Who knows.” Indeed—who knows. Much like the enduring mystery of who leaked the Becciu files to L’Espresso. An unsolvable riddle.
No coincidence that no major "non‑Vatican journalist" showed interest in the Pope’s speech to diplomats. It’s a prepared text—hard to spin into a front‑page scoop. Yet, miraculously, one sentence landed in every headline. A sentence unrelated to the speech’s theme. Why? “Because it was pushed from the inside by puppeteers in agony who know they will soon vacate their offices,” explains a staffer.
As Silere non possum warned back in 2022 about Praedicate Evangelium: “Hiring laypeople for five‑year terms is a Trojan horse: when the contract expires, they’ll start spitting venom at those who kept them for years.”
Clergy, by contrast, quietly return to their dioceses when their service ends—out of love for the Church and fear of their bishops. But lay employees? They don’t forgive; once excluded, they become time bombs, toxic like few others.
Now we’re left with a devastated communications apparatus, run for years by reckless amateurs—closer to the “Tor Pignattara bloggers” than to true professionals. And these very people now declare war on the new Pope because they dislike him: he wears the mozzetta, doesn’t live in Santa Marta, doesn’t indulge their whims, acts like a Pope.
They hated him before he even appeared on the balcony. Their candidate was from their clique, of course—he would have kept them in comfort. They loathe Prevost because he shuns the spotlight, dislikes interviews, prefers silence. Tornielli, hours after the election, rushed to say he had interviewed him once—of course, an interview the Prefect had granted because “these folks are always hovering, and first you had to say yes or they’d run crying to Santa Marta,” a priest explains. These people don’t even attend Sunday Mass, and if they do, they chatter the entire time, bothering everyone. They dislike Prevost because he talks about Jesus Christ, and they don’t even know who He is.
The truth is blunt: today, the enemy of these characters isn’t the liar but the one who tells the truth and stays outside their channels. So rather than wring our hands over attacks on Leo XIV, it’s time to root out these professionals of nothingness, these employees of falsehood, who should never have been allowed in.
F. S., C. A. S. & G. Z.
Silere non possum