The Pope's intriguing comments on Teh Gaze

[Cain]

So, the Pope, much in keeping with his chosen name, has made what is seen as a very positive comment in regard to homosexuality, by the standards of the Catholic Church:

Pope Francis has said gay people should not be judged or marginalised.

Speaking to reporters on a flight back from Brazil, he said: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?"

Which is all well and good.  But then he says this:

But he condemned what he described as lobbying by gay people.

"The problem is not having this orientation," he said. "We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem."

Somehow, I don't think he's talking generally here.

Gay lobbies and Masonic lobbies?  That's curiously specific.  There have been constant rumours of both lobbies having a large amount of sway in the Vatican, rumours which Pope Francis himself confirmed last month:

According to the report, the Pope was extremely open as he discussed problems at the Vatican.

He is said to have told the Latin American delegation that there were good, holy men in the administration, but that there was also corruption.

The Vatican would have to "see what we can do" about the "gay lobby" operating in the bureaucracy, he said. "It is true, it is there," the report quotes him as saying.

In the days leading up to Pope Benedict XVI's resignation in February, the Italian media carried many un-sourced reports that gay Vatican clergymen had been working together to advance their personal interests, leaving the Holy See vulnerable to blackmail.

There were even suggestions that the situation had influenced Benedict's decision to resign.

One of these alleged "gay lobby" members is Monsignor Battista Ricca, who was up until six days ago, the Prelate of the Vatican Bank.  And of course, the Vatican Bank has been a hotbed of scandals for generations.  Mafia financiers, dead bankers killed in bizarre parodies of Masonic symbolism, collusion with the Ustaša, profiting from the Holocaust and money laundering.

Obviously, given the general view of homosexuality in the Vatican, the existence of a network of gay priests would leave those priests very vulnerable to blackmail and extortion.  By this "Masonic" lobby, maybe?

When one thinks of "Masonic" lobbies in Italy, especially to do with the Vatican, one immediately thinks of Propaganda Due, the criminal secret society described as some by a shadow Italian government, with its high ranking members from the world of politics, the military, intelligence, high finance and the aristocracy.

Just so happens one of the key points of contact between the Vatican and Propaganda Due is the Vatican Bank.  Specifically, the existence of P2 was uncovered during the investigation of Michele Sindona, who was a member of P2 and a friend of Pope Paul VI (while managing the Gambino family's heroin profits on the side).  Banco Ambrosiano was another key point of contact - the bank was run by Roberto Calvi, who was another member of P2.  The principal shareholder in said bank?  The Vatican Bank.

Calvi is most infamous for the manner of his death - found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge on the edge of the financial district of London. Calvi's clothing was stuffed with bricks, and he was carrying around $15,000 worth of cash in three different currencies.  That P2 referred to their members as "Black Friars" is, of course, just coincidence.

P2 was dissolved in the wake of the Parliamentary investigation into it in Italy, though that doesn't mean it is necessary dead.  "In July 2010, the Roman political establishment was rocked by the exposure of a new parallel state basement society, instantly christened P3 in a logical numerical sequence. P3 specialized in graft to influence a number of judges sitting on contentious cases, or swing lucrative government contracts the right way."

And then there was P4.  P4 "operated as an underworld clique connected to the highest quarters of the state including the police, the military and powerful state corporations. The new Licio Gelli was named Luigi Bisignani, whose pedigree could be traced to the great political corruption mani pulite ('clean hands') scandals of the 1990's. He was said to have been a P2 member."  According to the Italy Chronicles, "The list [of members] seems to be without end and includes businessmen, high ranking politicians, policemen, secret service agents, a general, and the ex-director general of Italy's RAI state television."

Propaganda Due is one of those ideas which seems to refuse to die.

And it is worth noting that when Italian police raided the apartment of Pope Benedict's butler, Paolo Gabriele, in May 2012, they found "strange 007-style archive" which contained "letters from politicians, correspondence between cardinals and the Pope, and documents on freemasonry and secret services."  Also found were papers from the Pope's private desk marked, in German, "destroy", and 82 crates worth of files written by Gabriele himself.

Italian journalist Giacomo Galeazzi was told by the Vatican police that the files related to "'Masonry, esoterism, the P2 and P4 Masonic Lodges, secret services, the Bisignani and Calvi cases, the Vatican bank (IOR), the AIF [the body which oversees the Vatican finances] and Berlusconi, [...] Christianity and yoga, Christianity and other religions, yoga and Buddhism and other material which was presumably to do with Gabrieles' children's schooling and studies."  Other material is to do with "how to hide jpeg and Word files, how to record and make videos, and how to secretly use a cell phone."

As always, Vatican politics remain obscure, especially when they come into contact with Italian political corruption.  But if Francis is taking aim at P4, or something similar within the Vatican ranks...well, things could get ugly.

[Triple Zero]

Calvi is most infamous for the manner of his death - found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge on the edge of the financial district of London. Calvi's clothing was stuffed with bricks, and he was carrying around $15,000 worth of cash in three different currencies.  That P2 referred to their members as "Black Friars" is, of course, just coincidence.

amazing ... that sounds like the sort of thing a police officer would receive on their plate, investigate, and be sent tumbling down into a rabbit hole of conspiracies and secret societies like a Dan Brown novel (or parts of the Illuminatus Trilogy, for that matter).

you suppose that police officers don't actually do that in real life, as opposed to novels, think twice before messing with powerful secretive criminal-political organisations that could make life extraordinarily difficult (or just very short) for them or their families?

for completeness (I just browsed a couple of WP articles related to the above--most of what you wrote is in there btw), they did ultimately rule it not suicide but murder ... just 20 years later.

anyway, back to the topic, so the P2 obviously existed, were the P3 and P4 (together let's call them PX ) also real or were they just rumoured to exist? Asking because of

According to the Italy Chronicles, "The list [of members] seems to be without end and includes businessmen, high ranking politicians, policemen, secret service agents, a general, and the ex-director general of Italy's RAI state television."

Mention of a "list" reminds me a bit of Al-Qaeda, which is also not a central cohesive organisation but more a "list" of people and smaller collectives (or something like that? WP is not really clear about it).

What I mean is, if you have a lot of corruption and back-room dealings between politicians and other powerful figures, there will be some sort of "network" (in the loosest "nodes connected by edges" data structural sense) of who-talks-to-who and who-influences-who. At what point does such a structure become an actual "secret society"? When they have membership cards?

Because at some point the Masons kicked out the P2, and from what I understand the other PX have never been legitimate, so I guess they probably also wouldn't have "receipts of membership".

ok. connection with the "Gay Lobby"

does the Pope mean this lobby consists of people who are gay, or (what I thought at first but now I'm not so sure) people who support gay rights within the Catholic church or something?

are these two different lobbies? and why would the masons oppose the gays? I thought masonic thought was more enlightened (illuminated) than that? or would they just do it because blackmail/extortion means power.

would this have anything to do with that recent scandal about what was it exactly, a gay bathhouse in the Vatican or something and a lot of Vatican officials accidentally (or not) planning a conference there? (I might remember the details wrong here but it was ridiculous and hilarious)

[Nephew Twiddleton]

It did strike me as odd that he mentioned a Masonic lobby, and hot damn Cain, did you have the stuff to shed some light on that.

[Cain]

Oh yes, P3 and P4 are confirmed, though whether they're merely a network of corrupt officials who socialise with each other using the model brought into light by P2, or whether they are a more cohesive group, such as the original P2 was, remains unknown.

The original P2 actually had a proper membership roster.  Roberto Calvi was member #501, if I recall right.  However, P2 was also an actual Masonic lodge, at least until 1976, so that may have been a legal (judicial and Grant Orient masonry) requirement.

Also, I'm not entirely sure whether the Grand Orient disavowed them because they were dabbling in politics, or because they were caught dabbling in politics, if you know what I mean.  Even though the organization was unmasked in 1982, there were still plenty of people who knew about it in the 1970s, without necessarily being members.  Journalists, spies, terrorists, politicians...people of that ilk.  The Grand Lodge may have outlawed the group to give themselves plausible deniability should the group ever be caught red-handed...the French have had significant problems with lodges being used as cover for organized crime meetings, for example.

In regards to the gay lobby, mostly the former, though some may also be part of the latter.  Usually though, as tends to be the case, the most virulently anti-homosexual members of the clergy are the ones with something to hide.

I assume they are two different lobbies, yes.  Being a Mason was grounds for ex-communication...I don't think it is any longer, but the Church still views Masons in a very negative light.  Also, if you look at the actual membership rolls of groups like P2, you'll see they have a certain political persuasion in common, namely they are very, very rightwing and anticommunist.  These doesn't preclude them from having more enlightened views about homosexuality, but it is suggestive of a certain dislike for it.  They're also power brokers - some involved in sponsoring acts of state-supported terrorism and murder in Italy - so I doubt they would blink an eye at extortion and blackmail.

It could do, yes.  It turned out the Vatican owned one of the premier gay massage parlours in Europe, or a large part of the building in which the parlour was situated.