“It Couldn’t Be Better” Italy’s Most Masonic University Honors Cardinal Zuppi

Cardinal Matteo Zuppi was awarded an honorary doctorate on April 12 by the University of Catania, the most masonic university in Italy.  Where popes and bishops were booed not long ago, today the same people are patting them on the back.  What happened?

 By Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo*

In today's church it can happen that you feel a little like you are on the film set of the feature film “It couldn't get any better,” in which the main actor Jack Nicholson appears with a lovable little dog.  For those who haven't seen the film, let's summarize it briefly: Melvin Udall, played by Jack Nicholson, is a famous writer of romance novels, he is misanthropic, suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and gets through a hilarious tangle of events in which he gets involved with a restaurant waitress, a gay painter next door and his Belgian dwarf griffon puppy, an unexpected and incredible transformation occurs that turns him into a sensitive and lovable person.

Given certain facts, however, the film's ironic title falls short, because we are dealing with such radical changes that they seem difficult to interpret.  On April 12, the University of Catania awarded His Eminence Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Metropolitan Archbishop of Bologna and Chairman of the Italian Bishops' Conference, an honorary doctorate in Global Politics and Euro-Mediterranean Relations.

I consider it unnecessary to dwell on the close ties that linked this University with the historic Masonic lodges of the city even before February 17, 1861 - the date when the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was abolished - as well as the names of many distinguished academics  show who have proven to be members of Freemasonry over the course of two centuries.  Unless the numerous posters with the names of the deceased and the initials A:.G:.D:.G:.A:.D:.U:.  (a Masonic acronym meaning: "In honor of the great architect of all worlds"), which have been hung in the city at the foot of Etna in recent decades, were just a joke by the Catan printers or the editors of the daily newspapers La Sicilia and Il  Giornale di Sicilia, who wanted to have fun on the page of their obituaries, published for a fee in memory of the deceased.

Being a Freemason is neither reprehensible nor a crime under state law, it is a legitimate membership in a historical association;  unless it is a “deviant” lodge like the Propaganda Due (P2), which thrives on Freemasonry but was supposedly not an expression of it.  That Lodge membership is incompatible with membership in the Catholic Church is another matter, having to do with the Gnostic and esoteric structure that makes Freemasonry incompatible with the Catholic faith.

Without going into the anticlericalism that traditionally characterizes the University of Catania, since our interests are completely different, some clarifications are essential.  So let's start with a truly remarkable example that has now gone down in the history books: When Pope Benedict XVI in November 2007, when His Magnificence the Rector invited him to open the academic year at the Roman University of La Sapienza, he declined to give the Lectio magistralis after groups of students and professors protested against his presence, chanting “The university is secular!”  and were supported in their protest by representatives of many Italian universities, including those of Catania.

Before the start of today's season of young sheep-headed bishops - not a few of whom would have failed an exam in fundamental theology a few decades ago - we had in Italy several bishops who were great scholars and men of great culture, spread across all those different fields,  who were described as traditionalists, conservatives and progressives in journalistic language that was inappropriate because it was foreign to the actual structure of the church.  Or to put it in the words of the Archbishop of Pisa, Alessandro Plotti, who was deputy president of the Italian Bishops' Conference:

 “[…] If other opinions and perhaps even words of contradiction are not accepted, there can be no real change.  Today the General Assembly of the Italian Bishops' Conference is a mortuary because there are no longer any important personalities.  One could share or not share the positions of [Cardinal Giuseppe] Siri or [Cardinal Carlo Maria] Martini, but their speeches were important points of reference.  Today only the flatterers, those who want to be seen, speak;  The pastoral topic is dealt with in just half an hour and pushed off to study groups, and then we only talk about church taxes and money, which could very well be done by post.  “There are really big problems in the family, for example, that we have to address and everyone is trying to understand in which direction the church will go” (cf. interview, published in: Jesus on February 10, 2014).

Several of these bishops, including Alessandro Plotti himself, who belonged to the so-called progressive sector, have had to turn down invitations from academic institutions and universities several times over the past 30 years because of the omnipresent student agitators who were incited behind the scenes by former '68 professors, and made a fuss no matter what.  The then chairman of the Italian Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, was booed in Siena on September 24, 2005 because "he is the symbol of conservatism, the attack on the secularity of the state and the denial of gay rights," as the representatives said  the Young Communists of Siena claimed at a press conference.

We are not dealing with other people than those who yesterday had closed the doors to Benedict, are the same ones who today award an honorary doctorate to Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, President of the Italian Bishops' Conference.  Like his predecessor, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, he is no longer booed and treated with hostility because he allegedly violates the secularity of the state, but is instead greeted with pats on the back and addressed in a friendly manner as “Don Matteo”.

Instead of asking whether something has changed, one should ask: Who was exploited and why?  And we should also ask: Who is such a “flatterer” – to use the words of Monsignor Alessandro Plotti – that, because of his own inevitable and insurmountable limitations, he does not even notice that he is being exploited?

Let's try to look behind the scenes, because in this case it's not that difficult: In Catania, criminal proceedings were opened against the then Interior Minister Matteo Salvini from the Lega because he had prevented 116 illegal immigrants from landing at the end of July 2019 and were unable to go ashore from the ship “Gregoretti”, which was stopped in the port of the Sicilian city of Augusta in the province of Syracuse.  It is an undeniable fact that, under the current pontificate, migrants are an element that moves between obsessional neurosis and ideology.  This also applies to the partly verified, partly still to be verified involvement of some bishops with militant communists such as Luca Casarini, with whom one should only have contact with extreme caution and, above all, with the utmost prudence and who certainly should not be invited to a synod of bishops.1

Translated from English into Italian, Cardinal Zuppi was awarded an honorary doctorate in “Global Politics and Euro-Mediterranean Relations”.  Incredible!  Previous popes and bishops were thrown out at universities or booed whenever they approached state institutions or foundations because, regardless of their leanings, whether conservative or progressive, they still said what the world did not hear  wanted.  The Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, and the Archbishop of Milan, Carlo Maria Martini, as different as they and their responses were, were both concerned about secular developments in European society, especially the sometimes even hateful and violent rejection of the  Christianity.  Today, when the world has decided to have fun with a lot of new bishops who act as either "flatterers" or "sheepheads", the President of the Italian Bishops' Conference is patted on the back, called "Don Matteo" and awarded  the honorary doctorate on precisely those global political and Euro-Mediterranean issues on which those who act as grantors have called for the head of a minister of the Italian Republic with an attitude more bloodthirsty than Robespierre's.

Even if nothing has changed in reality, we are not idiots and have no intention of allowing ourselves to be treated as such by a world that makes it known that it loves us exactly to the extent that we are willing  to be ashamed of Christ, forgetting that it is written:

 “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words before this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes with the holy angels in the majesty of his Father” (Mark 8:38).

Today, more than ever, the Apostle Paul is embarrassing and dangerous like few others:

“Is it about people’s approval, or am I about God?  Am I trying to please people?  If I still wanted to please people, then I would not be a servant of Christ.  I declare to you, brothers, that the Gospel that I have preached is not of man;  I did not take it over or learn it from a human being, but received it through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:10-12).

We Catholics should expect neither applause nor honors from this society, which, following the model and example of France, wants to enshrine the “great general right to abortion” in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.  If we receive applause or recognition, it is because we are the first to assure the children of the prince of this world that “the Gospel is ultimately not a distillation of the truth,” as the President of the Italian Bishops' Conference, now honoris causa, recently said in a statement  Interview with the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera explained.

If I wanted, I could also suggest to His Most Reverend Eminence, for his friends Don Matteo, another effective expression that would soon make him the second Italian to be appointed a member of the Académie Française after Maurizio Serra2, but I prefer it  to remain silent and not to make any suggestions.

From the island of Patmos, April 14, 2024

Ariel Stefano Levi di Gualdo

 *Ariel Stefano Levi di Gualdo, born in 1963, whose early life was a struggle between Judaism and Christianity, chose Jesus Christ and became a Catholic priest.  The polyglot student of the Church historian Fr. Peter Gumpel was ordained a priest of the diocese of San Marino and Montefeltro in 2010 by Archbishop Luigi Negri.  He is a dogmatist and is commissioned as an exorcist and for canonization proceedings.  He has been editor of the theological series “Fides Quaerens Intellectum” since 2014 and of the magazine “L’Isola di Patmos” since 2018 as well as head of the publishing house of the same name.  He is also the author of numerous books that aim to shake up and therefore provoke everyone, including:  2007 by him: “Erbe Amare, il secolo del sionismo” (“Bitter Herbs: The Zionist Century”), which has been available in a second edition since 2021;  2011: “E Satana si fece Trino” (“And the devil made himself triune. Relativism, Individualism, Disobedience: An Analysis of the Church of the Third Millennium”), 2020: “La Chiesa e il Coronavirus” (“The Church and the Coronavirus  “Between super lies and tests of faith”), 2nd edition 2021;  “L’aspirina dell’Islam moderato” (“The aspirin of moderate Islam. When Europe invents what does not exist and denies the real danger”);  2022: “Guerra di propaganda e ideologica” (“Propaganda and ideological war. From partisan warfare to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict”).

Translation/Footnotes: Giuseppe Nardi

Image: MiL/L’Isola di Patmos

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

 1 Pope Francis appointed the communist and Antifa activist Luca Casarini, to whom the official Catholic media likes to give the new mantle of a “sea rescue activist”, a special synod member of the Synodality Synod in the summer of 2023, where he has not had the right to vote since then, but has had the right to speak.  The first session of the Synodality Synod took place in October 2023, the second will take place next October.  The controversial synod has now been extended by Francis until June 2025.

2 In 2020, the diplomat and writer Maurizio Serra became the first Italian to be appointed a member of the Académie Française, founded in 1634.  The appointments are for life.  He occupies the 13th of only 40 seats, which was held before him by Simone Veil (1927–2017), who, as Minister of Health, presented the law legalizing abortion, which was passed by the French Parliament at the end of 1974.  The investiture speech for Serra was given by Xavier Darcos, former education minister in the bourgeois government of Nicolas Sarkozy and now chancellor of the Institut de France, who holds the 40th seat in the academy, and who sang the praises of Simone Veil.

AMDG