To cleanse the Church, we need, not a time machine, but holiness

by Aldo Maria Valli

Moral corruption in the Church was certainly not born just in our time, but comes from afar, and has its roots in the lack of sanctity.

Alessandro Gnocchi, who in the pages of the magazine Riscossa cristiana follows and comments on the events of the Church with passion and intellectual honesty, is one of the few voices able to judge the current crisis in an historical perspective. In doing so, he explains that what Monsignor Viganò has revealed to the world about the current situation has a precedent: the denunciation of Emanuele Brunatto [1892-1965], the first spiritual son of Padre Pio [1887-1968].

To return to those facts means to immerse oneself in a reality that many Catholic faithful would prefer not to see and not to know. Yet it is necessary. At the time of Benedict XV [1914-1922] and Pius XI [1922-1939] moral corruption within the Church was not only widespread, says Alessandro Gnocchi, but greater than today. This is why the argument that the ruin began with the Second Vatican Council [1962-1965] does not persuade. In reality, the ruin (of the Church) is born each time holiness is not put in the first place. And this applies to all times. Nor can it be maintained that it is sufficient to safeguard the right doctrine in order to have a good Church.

In the interview that we propose here, Alessandro Gnocchi elaborates on the basic themes contained in his essay Padre Pio, crucified by the Church of the Antichrists (An Infernal Novel), a text that can leave one dismayed, yet a text that must be read.

As Alessandro explains, the stigmata of Padre Pio were taken seriously not only by hosts of devoted believers, but also, and perhaps above all, by the servants of the Enemy, who understood very well their significance. Hence the persecution that struck the friar from within the Church. A lesson more than ever current.

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Aldo Maria Valli: From the White Paper of Emanuele Brunatto, and above all from the Letter to the Church and The Antichrists in the Church of Christ, a very grim picture emerges. It turns out that at the summit of the Church, in that period between the 1920s and 1930s of the last century, moral corruption was profound, rampant, obstinate. Hence the real reason for the persecution of the stigmatized friar [Padre Pio], Alter Christus in a Church of Antichrists. Is this summary correct?

[Note: The first spiritual son of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, Emanuele Brunatto lived at the convent of San Giovanni Rotondo alongside the future saint from 1920 to 1925, defending Padre Pio in writing. A native of Turin, he held multiple jobs and lived a dissolute life until 1920 when, after reading an article, he decided to visit San Giovanni Rotondo to see the first stigmatized priest in the history of the Catholic Church. This meeting led to a memorable confession, an immediate conversion and a lifelong bond with Padre Pio.]

Alessandro Gnocchi: This is precisely what happened in those years summed up in the fewest possible words. I thought it over for a couple of weeks before deciding to tell what I discovered by reading the documents and the reconstructions put aside by Brunatto, who, it must be remembered, was the first spiritual son of Padre Pio.

At first I thought of leaving everything in silence, also because Padre Pio told Brunatto not to publish that material, not even for the purpose of obtaining his freedom. Then I realized that the letter in which the Father asked for silence was not freely written and I began to change my mind. But what definitely convinced me is the observation that what you have revealed to the world thanks to Monsignor Viganò’s memorial was already in the archive of Emanuele Brunatto.

So, I said to myself, why Bergoglio [Pope Francis] and not Benedict XV and Pius XI? The news was the same and my job description told me what I had to do [that is, tell the story].

Besides, I must confess that I can no longer stand all those “traditionalists” who hold that the world was perfect until midnight on October 10, 1962 [the day before the openig of the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962] and then Vatican II came to destroy everything. Just as it does not seem honest to me to argue that, perhaps, evil-doers and supporters of evil-doers were active even before Vatican II, but only outside the Leonine walls [the walls that surround the Vatican].

According to some commentators, even later in the analysis, the disaster stemmed from a renunciation of the exercise of authority. But why? And since when? I believe that, as regards the Catholic Church, the problem is not in the renunciation of the exercise of authority, but in the renunciation of sanctity by authority. That’s why I wanted to tell even just a very small part of what I discovered.

Aldo Valli: What were the distinctive features of the moral degradation reported by Brunatto?

Alessandro Gnocchi: It can be summarized in one concept: corruption. Moral corruption, with the spread of homosexual practice and the domination of the homosexual lobby, reaching even to the papal throne. I can assure you that the pontificate of Benedict XV is simply appalling from this point of view. But under Pius XI the situation did not change.

Evidently the infection came from very far away and, as you could also perceive as you studied the revelations of Viganò, it spread very far. And it will spread very far. It is a matter of the corruption of ecclesial life, with the struggle for offices, careers, favors, compromises and, naturally, money.

In the end we perceive the corruption of the men, who practiced this abomination using the name of Christ as a shield.

Aldo Valli: But, one could point out to you that the preaching of orthodox doctrine never failed in those years …

Alessandro Gnocchi: Formally, one can also try to support this thesis, which in any case is a an historical falsehood.

This, for me, is the most painful point, because I too had fallen into the trap of the equation “good doctrine equals good Church.”

The facts show us that this is not the case.

Among the vices of the Catholic Church is that of formalism linked to an excessively juridical mentality.

The idea that one may simply state the letter (of the law) correctly to save any practice. In this way we have arrived, and not just over one century, to a Church founded on canon law instead of the Gospel.

When we do not have holiness as our first goal, we end up corrupting everything that comes after, and I mean everything.

Good doctrine is proclaimed only as a weapon to wage war on one’s adversaries.

But when the doctrine is used as a weapon, it always ends up being adapted to the war and, therefore, is altered.

We start by considering the doctrine under a new, instrumental aspect, and we end up finding a new doctrine, perhaps more effective, but a new one in our hands.

Not to mention that if you use it to wage war and the war is lost, the doctrine will succumb together with the defeated.

 

Full interview at:  https://insidethevatican.com/category/news/newsflash/