The Daily Knight
- Oct 12, 2023

St. Gallen Mafia prelates were named by suspected Freemason Cardinal Baggio

The Daily Knight

Cardinal Godfried Danneels and St. Gallen Mafia presenting Pope Francis' Papal Election

'All those bishops and cardinals who formed the [Saint] Gallen group were named by Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio,' Father Charles Murr said, referring to one of the cardinals who in 1974 was accused by two other cardinals of being a freemason.

(LifeSiteNews) – Father Charles Murr drew a link between Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, who is accused of being a freemason, and the formation of the Saint Gallen group. Speaking on LifeSite’s October 6 Faith & Reason show, Murr claimed that all of the bishops and cardinals that originally formed the Saint Gallen group were named by Baggio. Murr is a book author, close friend of Pope Pius XII’s housekeeper Mother Pascalina, and an insider to the 1978 Vatican investigation into ecclesial freemasonry.

This comment, which was not further explained, makes more sense in light of Murr’s own 2022 book Murder in the 33rd Degree: the Vatican Investigation into Vatican Freemasonry. Murr was a close friend of Cardinal Edouard Gagnon, who had been tasked by the Pope to investigate the problem of freemasonry within the Vatican hierarchy and thus is privy to some of these internal findings and debates. He describes in his book how in 1974 two cardinals – Dino Staffa and Silvio Oddi – presented Pope Paul VI with documentation about two Vatican prelates. These two men, Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio and Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, were “accused” by Oddi and Staffa “with proof in hand,” for being “active Freemasons.”

Cardinal Baggio was Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Bishops, from 1973 until 1984 and as such had great influence over which clergymen were chosen as bishops, and often subsequently cardinals.

My friend and colleague at LifeSite, Liz Yore, has done her own research in this matter and found out the following with regard of several members of the Saint Gallen Group. She wrote to me:

There are St. Gallen Group members who were appointed bishops when Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, known Freemason, was head of the Congregation for Bishops from 1973-1984. The list of the St. Gallen Group can be found on Wikipedia, and here are listed those bishops who were picked during the time of Cardinal Baggio:

Cardinal Carlo Martini: 1980
Cardinal Ted McCarrick: 1977
Cardinal Godfried Danneels: 1977
Cardinal Karl Lehmann: 1983
Cardinal Achille Silvestrini: 1979
Cardinal Murphy O’Connor: 1977
Bishop Liubomyr Huzar: 1977
Cardinal Jose Policarpo: 1978

We could add that Cardinal Basil Hume, who was a key member of the early Saint Gallen Group, was also made a bishop, in 1976, under the reign of Cardinal Baggio.

Both Hume and Martini were leading members of the progressive wing of the Catholic Church in Europe; they consecutively headed the influential Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) from 1979 until 1993 when Pope John Paul II removed Cardinal Carlo Martini as the head of the CCEE because they were trying to set up parallel structures to Rome and thus undermined the authority of the Pope in Europe. They were already then pushing for the progressivist agenda. Father Ivo Fürer – the man who was later made bishop and who then organized in a more formal way the meetings of the Saint Gallen group from 1996 on until 2006 – during his episcopacy in Saint Gallen, Switzerland, was also the secretary of the CCEE, from 1975 until 1995, for 20 years. He stated that Martini’s book Night Conversations with Cardinal Martini pretty much summed up the positions of the Saint Gallen Group. That same cardinal was praised multiple times by Pope Francis. Pope Francis is an explicit disciple of Cardinal Martini.

For example, not long after his papal election, Francis praised Martini in public, calling him “prophetic,” “a father for the whole Church,” and a “man of discernment and of peace.” He also once said: “I’d like to remind you that Carlo Maria Martini also came from that [Jesuit] order, someone who is very dear to me and also to you.”

The close connection between Martini and Fürer can be seen in Fürer’s own words.

“We came together for regular private St. Gallen meetings with friends [‘St. Galler Freundschaftstreffen’] which Martini and I organized,” the Swiss bishop explained. “We invited bishops from different countries who suited us. Each time, we were between eight and ten persons and freely discussed all Church matters.”

Martini once also commented on these meetings in Saint Gallen. Fürer quoted Martini as saying that “there is no other meeting in the Church where one can speak so freely and so personally as in St. Gallen.”

“Much of what we discussed at these meetings,” the Swiss bishop concluded, “Martini worked into the book Night Conversations with Cardinal Martini.”

In 2018, Fürer published his own memoirs, Church in Changing Times (Kirche im Wandel der Zeit, published by Theologischer Verlag Zürich). In this book, he describes how he, together with Cardinal Martini, engaged in an intense battle with Pope John Paul II about which direction the Catholic Church in Europe should be taking.

The German journalist Julius Müller-Meiningen wrote in depth about the Saint Gallen group, back in 2015. He then quoted Cardinal Walter Kasper, another members of the Saint Gallen group, who claimed: “What Francis now tries to implement corresponds to a high degree to the thoughts that we [at the Saint Gallen group] had at the time.” And the journalist adds: “The members of the former round table [Saint Gallen Group] have today a determining influence upon the agenda of the Catholic Church.”

Without going into the details on how the Saint Gallen group helped get Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) elected pope in 2013 – after their earlier failed attempt at stopping Joseph Ratzinger’s papal election in 2005 – it is worth mentioning here that it was Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, one of the Baggio-appointed bishops and member of the Saint Gallen group, who is largely known to have played a key role in the election of Pope Francis.

Several of these Saint Gallen bishops had written to Jorge Bergoglio – who met the Saint Gallen group when being made cardinal at the same 2001 consistory as Saint Gallen members Cardinals Kasper, Murphy-O’Connor, Audrys Juozas Bačkis, and Karl Lehmann – a postcard from Rome right ahead of the 2005 conclave with the words: “We are here in the spirit of St. Gallen.”

That means that by 2005, Jorge Bergoglio was aware of that group and their larger plans. The conclave of 2005 had Jorge Bergoglio already leading right after Ratzinger, but it was due to a leak to the media and the revelations about the activities of that Saint Gallen group that his election seems to have been thwarted.

All this could mean that Pope Francis was collaborating and finally elected into the papacy by a group of modernist bishops and cardinals who were themselves picked by a man who was a Freemason.

Several of the key members of that Saint Gallen group – Silvestrini, Danneels, and Martini – have been explicitly mentioned in various media as possible freemasons.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a few years before he became Pope, once told a colleague of mine, Dr. Robert Moynihan, what he thought of the dangerous role of Freemasonry in the Church.

“I asked the Cardinal,” Moynihan reported back in 2020, “where the greatest danger to the authentic Catholic faith lies. ‘Is it in our own selves, our own sins and weaknesses. Is this what is the greatest danger to the Church or is it something else, some external enemy?’”

Moynihan continued: “He looked at me directly in the eyes and then after a moment’s pause, as if he were reflecting, he said: ‘It is Freemasonry.’”

So much more research needs to be done. But Father Murr’s comments and recent revelations can lead the way.

Let us quote here again from his book on Freemasonry in the Vatican:

Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Bishops since 1973, decided who would and who would not become a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. He chose these episcopal candidates from the pool of half a million priests throughout the world. [….] If, as Staffa and Oddi alleged, Sebatiano Baggio was the “Freemason Ambassador to the Holy See,” the havoc he was in a position to wreak upon the universal Church could cause irreparable damage. The bishops who had been nominated on his watch reflected Baggio’s own liberal ideological views.

And, as Father Murr reports, a subsequent investigation in 1978 of the claims of Oddi and Staffa against Baggio and his involvement with Freemasonry were authenticated and confirmed by Archbishop Giovanni Benelli. But neither Pope Paul VI nor Pope John Paul II took serious steps against Baggio.

Murr then also quotes Cardinal Gagnon, who was unsuccessful in trying to convince Pope Paul VI that he had to take action against Cardinal Baggio. Gagnon is quoted as saying: “The gravity of allowing Sebastiano Baggio, Cardinal and Freemason, to continue as Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Bishops was simply and completely intolerable.”

In a sense, we are living still with the consequences of that papal laxity toward ecclesial freemasons, as it seems.

Could it thus be that Pope Francis has been essentially elected by a groups of cardinals and bishops who were picked by a Freemason cardinal, thus now serving an agenda that stems out of freemasonic ideologies?