THIS VATICANISTA REPORTER IS MY HERO—SANDRO MAGISTER! SUPER REPORTER!

And dear Sandro sings his own praises too! Press the title for  the whole story by Magister. I have a copied a synopsis of the “magnificent seven” below the title—but the unabridged full story is best, not the Cliff notes I publish!

The Magnificent Seven. The True Story of the Secret Documents Made Public by Settimo Cielo (Sandro Magister)

THE FIRST of the seven was the note that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, sent in 2004 to the bishops of the United States on the question of Eucharistic communion for “pro-choice” Catholic politicians.

THE SECOND was a document drawn up in Crete in 2008 by a joint Catholic-Orthodox commission, which took stock of the possible convergences between the Church.

THE THIRD document is Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato si’.” The Vatican was set to launch it with great pomp on Thursday June 18 2015. But three days before this, around noon on Monday the 15th, the two hundred pages of the encyclical appeared on the website of “L’Espresso,” the weekly for which I wrote.

THE FOURTH document I made public in October of that same 2015, when I was still in exile (reinstatement to the Vatican press office took place in December). And it went down in history as “the letter of the 13 cardinals.”

THE FIFTH document in the series is that of the famous “dubia” submitted to Pope Francis in 2016 by four cardinals, regarding communion for the divorced and remarried. After more than two months without a response from the pope, the four cardinals entrusted me with the publication of the document in several languages, which took place on November 14. The four were Walter Brandmüller, Raymond L. Burke, Carlo Caffarra, Joachim Meisner.

THE SIXTH document is the letter that pope emeritus Benedict wrote on February 7 2018 to Dario Viganò, then at the head of the Vatican media, in which he turned down the request to write an introductory page of praise for a series of eleven booklets on the theological and philosophical thought of Pope Francis, written by various authors including the German Peter Hünermann, a staunch and longstanding opponent of Ratzinger as theologian, and the Jesuit artist Marko Ivan Rupnik, who years later would be exposed for his deplorable behavior but at the time had a spotless reputation and even acted as spiritual director for Viganò himself.

AND THE SEVENTH document in the series, the real name of whose author I kept secret while he was alive, is none other than the memorandum by George Pell that in recent days has made such a splash on account of his severe criticisms of Francis’s pontificate. I received it on March 5 2022 from the cardinal’s own hands, with instructions to publish it with the signature “Demos.” Which was done on Settimo Cielo on March 12.