ROME
Irish Times
Paddy Agnew in Rome
“And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.”
It may just have been a coincidence but, in his homily during Tuesday’s Mass In Suffrage for deceased cardinals and bishops, Pope Francis quoted the above words from Numbers 21, 6. In what has been another dramatic week for the Holy See, no one could blame the pope for having “fiery serpents” on his mind. For now, there seem to be a lot of them about.
This has been another Vatican week when reality has outdone the most outlandish Dan Brown fiction. A Watergate-style break-in, stolen documents, not so thinly veiled Mafia-style threats and Opus Dei all featured.
It began with the arrest on Monday by the Vatican gendarmerie of Spanish monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Francesca Chaouqui in connection with “the removal and dissemination” of confidential economic Vatican documents.
These arrests came just four days before the publication of two books, outlining the resistance of elements in the Roman Curia (and elsewhere) to the ongoing Francis “reform” process.
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