UNITED STATES
The Guardian (UK)
Kristina Keneally
Leaking, back-stabbing, corruption, and backroom deals done by faceless men – never mind Australian politics, this is the Catholic church.
Forget the bloodless assassination of Tony Abbott’s political career, the Vatican actually killed Pope John Paul I. At least that’s what lots of people believe. The “smiling pope” served for only 33 days, and the circumstances of his death have given rise to multiple books and many murder theories.
John Paul I came to office in 1978 promising a new style:
[W]arm, compassionate, genuinely happy to be with ordinary people, a man of obvious faith who didn’t wear his piety on his sleeve or take himself too seriously. He pioneered the simplification of the papacy by dropping the royal “we”, declining coronation with the papal tiara and discontinuing use of the … portable throne.
Remind you of anyone?
Depending on which conspiracy theory you want to believe, John Paul I was killed by the conservatives in the church either because he wanted to take the Catholic church in a radically new direction or because he was about to embark on a clean-up of the shadowy and suspect practices at the Vatican Bank.
Remind you of anyone?
Now we have another populist pope and a fresh round of conspiracy theories. Pope Francis is delighting many, wowing the world’s media and renewing interest in the Catholic church with his simplicity, his openness, and his apparent determination to shift the church’s focus away from legalistic obsessions, especially with sex and morality.
Refusing to judge homosexuals, allowing atheists to get into heaven, and speaking to the US Congress without once mentioning abortion: Francis seems to have the conservatives on edge and looking for ways to fight back.
If the conspiracy theories are to be believed, the conservatives struck a blow last week by strategically leaking that the pope had a “secret meeting” during his visit to the US with Kim Davis. The current cause celebre for American conservatives, Davis is a local government bureaucrat in Kentucky and an apparent defender of marriage as traditionally defined between a man and a woman (she’s had four of her own).
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.