- Semper Excelsius
Communist Bishop: Another problematic beatification from Rome
Pope Francis just announced the beatification of Enrique Angelelli (“Satanelli”).
There were many radical bishops in the wild years following the Second Vatican Council. But Enrique Angelelli, bishop of La Rioja, Argentina, was probably the most radical. He was a Communist in all but name and stridently supported the terrorist organization “Montoneros”, the leftist terrorist branch of the Peronist movement.
“The La Rioja bishop had an active and proved link with the terrorist organization Montoneros.”
It can be undoubtedly said that the horrid military dictatorship that governed Argentina from 1976 until the Falklands War was brought about as a brutal overreaction to the terrorist attacks coordinated by Montoneros in favor of a Socialist-Peronist revolution.
Political and radical leftist bishop
Angelelli was so leftist, so radically leftist and so political, that the shocked practicing faithful of his own diocese used to call him in life “Satanelli”. He died in a car accident in 1976. Yet Francis has decided to beatify Satanelli as a “martyr”! (It is all very ironic because, even though it is claimed, now, that Fr. Bergoglio opposed the dictatorship, at the time he was considered an ally of the military, and even close to the most brutal of the Junta’s members, Admiral Emilio Massera.)
“Pope Francis has decided to beatify Satanelli as a “martyr”. Even if, hypothetically, it had been a murder, Angelelli would not be a martyr for defending the faith.”
La Nación, the oldest and most respected daily in Argentina (the only major newspaper that supported the pro-life position in their recent victory against abortion in the national Senate), ran the following editorial on this startling piece of news. La Nación is also, by the way, an ally of Francis, and its Rome correspondent, Elisabetta Piqué, is the journalist who is probably closest to Francis — so this is obviously not moved by any animus against the Bishop of Rome.
“Beatifications are not considered infallible ecclesiastical decisions. Canonizations are not infallible either, but hold the status 'infallible according to the majority of theologians' which means they may be prudently questioned, but without scandalizing the faithful."
Beatification problems
It is clear that something is substantially wrong with the current beatifications and canonizations. With these the Church proclaims the Christian exemplariness of the life of a person and authorizes his being the object of cult. A large number of these recently proclaimed “saintly” individuals led disedifying lives. We need to start questioning the discrepancy between the message we are conveying to the Church’s faithful and the reality.
Luckily for us, beatifications are not considered infallible ecclesiastical decisions. Canonizations are not infallible either, but hold the status “infallible according to the majority of theologians” which means they may be prudently questioned, but without scandalizing the faithful.
Original article at Semper Excelsius, here.
