A New Cardinal Pell Interview

 

Damian Thompson is in Rome and has secured an interview with Cardinal Pell. It is well worth a listen:

As always, the Cardinal does a great job of clearly giving his opinion while being loyal and faithful to the Pope.

On the Vatican/ China deal, Pell, the former Vatican Prefect for the Economy, states:

'I know high-up people in the Vatican are very dissatisfied with the way things are going,'

The Cardinal uses this example to show how there is a lack of transparency in the Bergoglian Vatican:

'The agreement is there to try to get a bit of space for the Catholics. Obviously that's praiseworthy. [But] I don't think we've gained anything. The persecutions seem to be continuing. In some places they've got worse.' Nobody 'outside a small circle' knows the details of the agreement, 'which seems to me to be quite irregular.'

Speaking on the weirdness of the synod, Pell remarks that there is a strange disconnect between Pope Francis' own authoritarian style and the perceived direction of travel towards a federation of autocephalous national churches, as articulated by the Pope in Evangelii gaudium.

Pell also makes clear his unhappiness with the sudden move last year to restrict celebrations of the traditional Latin Mass. 

'I think it was a most unfortunate decision and I think a bit inexplicable, too,' he says. But he advises traditionalists to keep calm, because there are signs that the very hard line taken by the Vatican's liturgy chief, the Yorkshire-born Archbishop Arthur Roche, is now being reconsidered.

He also has some interesting things to say about the Church in the US and the Church in the UK. An interesting perspective from Rome, and, I can't help but feel this is further evidence that the papacy of Jorge Bergoglio has not been well received and is, thankfully, on its way out.