With a chronology of events based on Internet materials, without attempts at analytics and mythology.
Main characters
Pope Francis (Jorge Bergoglio), a member of the Jesuit order, ruled over the Argentine Jesuits. The so-called "White Pope".
Ex-Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) for 25 years, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (former Holy Inquisition), elected Pope in 2005
Supreme General of the Jesuit Order, Adolfo Nicholas, the so-called "Black Pope".
Cardinal Pepe Orsini, the so-called "Gray Pope", is from one of 13 Italian families from which popes have been chosen for hundreds of years. It is they who actually rule the Jesuits and the Maltese order, but from time immemorial they compete with each other.
Prelate of the Order of Opus Dei, Bishop Javier Echevarria
Promotional video:
Grand Master of the Order of Malta Matthew Festing
Albrecht von Boselager, Grand Chancellor of the Order of Malta, concurrently Governor of the Vatican Bank.
Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke
Prologue
Pope Benedict XI died in 1304. In the summer of the following year, King Philip IV of France "the Handsome" managed to plant his own candidate Bernard de Gotha, Archbishop of Bordeaux, on the See of St. Peter. The new pontiff took the name Clement V and began to act at the behest of the French monarch. To further strengthen his power, he went to radical measures: in 1309 he kidnapped the papal throne and transferred it from Rome to Avignon. He was destined to remain in Avignon for almost three-quarters of a century, and all seven popes who climbed on him during these years were French.
When Gregory XI eventually returned to Rome in 1377, the French cardinals elected another pope, later called "antipope", who remained in Avignon.
The "Great Schism" of 1378 - the conflict between rival popes and antipopes - was destined to continue until 1417. Power in Europe was divided in half between Rome and Avignon.
Tie
In 2009, D. Nuzzi's revelatory book "Vatican LLC" was published, revealing the schemes for transferring shadow money through the Vatican Bank. In relation to the Bank, the Italian authorities seized part of the funds, and a criminal case was opened against its director Tedeschi. After that, the Vatican begins to fight for inclusion in the FATF "white list", adopts a law on combating money laundering.
In the spring of 2012, the Vatican supported the initiatives of the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) to reorganize the global financial system, which would allow the bloc to create its own settlement system. It could be joined by the countries of Latin America and the Arab arc.
In April 2012, Nuzzi's even more revealing study, His Holiness, was released. After that, the Italian authorities once again accused the Vatican Bank of connivance with money laundering, the Rockefeller financial holding JPMorgan in Milan closes the Vatican Bank account under the pretext of lacking the necessary information, the US State Department for the first time includes the Vatican in the list of countries vulnerable to money laundering.
In May 2012, an information campaign began to find the body of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of an employee of the Vatican Bank, who had disappeared back in 1983. The campaign went under the slogan "Emanuela Orlandi was kidnapped for sex parties in the Vatican!" As part of the same campaign, the "gay scandal" in the Vatican was also used, when the media disseminated information about a secret report to the Pope on the non-traditional sexual orientation of representatives of the highest Catholic leadership.
On May 30, 2012, an agreement was signed between the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers to combine their assets - RothshildInvestmentTrust "CapitalPartners" (RIT CP) acquired a large stake in Rockefeller Financialservices (RFS), which manages the family business of the Rockefellers and other wealthy US families.
On January 1, 2013, the terminals of the Italian representative office of Deutsche Bank, which carried out transactions with bank cards in the Vatican, were deactivated on the territory of the Vatican, as it was stated due to the failure of the Holy See to comply with international rules for combating money laundering.
On February 9, 2013, celebrations opened at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican in honor of the order officially founded in February 1113, to which more than a thousand knights and ladies arrived to receive the blessing of Benedict XVI.
On February 11, 2013, Benedict XVI announced his abdication from the throne.
On February 12, 2013, operations with bank cards resumed on the territory of the Vatican.
On February 15, 2013 (on the birthday of the Order of Malta), the Pope makes the last major decision: the knight of the Order of Malta, German industrialist, lawyer and financier Ernst von Freiberg, who became the first in history by a non-Italian who led the Vatican Bank. Benedict XVI had never met the new director until that day, and his candidacy was proposed by the well-known international agency for the selection of top managers Spencer & Stuart.
In early March 2013, a Milan court sentenced Silvio Berlusconi to a year in prison. He was accused of involvement in the disclosure of confidential information in the case of the purchase of the insurance group Unipol Bank BNL.
On the same days, the head of the press service of the oldest bank in Italy, Montedei Paschidi Siena, threw himself out of his office window. Around the bank in January 2013 a scandal erupted: information about losses was allegedly hidden there. The entire leadership was dismissed, the prosecutor's office began an investigation. According to experts, this is the death of a scapegoat appointed by the "scapegoat".
On March 12, 2013, a conclave for the election of a new Pope opened.
On March 13, 2013, Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires was elected as the new pontiff, who took the name Francis. In the 2005 elections, Bergoglio was second after J. Ratzinger. So his election cannot be considered unexpected. Judging by the record-breaking short terms of the conclave's work, the question of a new pope had already been decided in advance.
On December 31, 2013, the new Pope Francis removed from the Vatican a secret intermediary, Cardinal (Vice-Pope) Tarsisio Bertoni.
Climax
On August 24, 2014, two grand-nephews, their mother, and Francis's nephew were killed in a car accident in Argentina, shortly after the pontiff's visit to South Korea, where he hinted that he might soon step down or die within three years.
On March 13, 2015, the Vatican released documents proving that the Templars were innocent. The Order of the Knights Templar officially ceased to exist on March 22, 1314, when anti-Pope Clement V issued his bull Vox in excelso, banning the Order forever.
In December 2015, Licho Gelli, the former head of the P2 Masonic lodge, in one way or another connected with the Vatican bank, died.
Epilogue
On January 18, 2016, Francis, during a meeting with IMF Director Christine Lagarde, agreed to transfer the assets of the Vatican for use in the global forgiveness of the debts of the population, with the subsequent abdication of the Holy See.
In October 2016, the Supreme General of the Jesuit Order, Adolfo Nicholas, for the first time in history, like Benedict XVI, voluntarily renounced the life title. The general of the Jesuits reports directly to the pontiff. But, becoming a pope, Bergoglio remained a member of the order. The situation remained ambiguous.
December 5, 2016, Prelate of Opus Dei, Mons. Javier Echevarria, Bishop, was admitted to the Rome Campus Bio-Medico due to a lung infection. To fight infection Mons. Echevarria was taking an antibiotic. The clinical picture became more complicated in the last hours, provoking respiratory failure, which led to death on December 12.
On December 6, 2016, Albrecht von Boselager voluntarily left the post of the Grand Hospitaller, but later found out that the Vatican did not demand his resignation, and complained to the pontiff. The position of Cardinal Burke added fuel to the fire: Francis appointed him as his representative to the order in 2014 after he was removed from his post at the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signature (the highest court of the Catholic Church). Raymond Leo Burke is known as a conservative and harsh critic of the pope, and the main purpose of this move was to remove the orthodox luminary of canon law from active church life. This was not a "advance", but a "removal".
On December 22, 2016, the Council of Knights of the Order of Malta, under the direction of Grand Master Matthew Festing, with the participation of Cardinal Burke, removed from office the Grand Chancellor of the Order.
On December 23, 2016, (presumably) Pope Bergoglio immediately established a five-member Vatican commission to investigate the correctness of the Order's advice to remove Boselager. The front on the part of the dismissed Chancellor was supported by the progressive left wing of the Order, who enjoyed the favor of Francis, who decided to institute an investigation. The commission included the former Vatican Permanent Observer to the UN agencies in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, former rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Jesuit Fr. Gianfranco Garland and three members of the Order of Malta.
On December 23, 2016, the most grotesque terrorist attack took place in Malta, the hijacking of an A320 aircraft, allegedly by two supporters of the long-killed Muammar Gaddafi. Malta Airport has canceled all flights. The freed passengers reported that they saw grenades at the invaders, but did not understand what the requirements were. The son of Muammar Gaddafi, Seif Al-Islam, meanwhile, said that he had nothing to do with them. The incident was completely settled within 4 hours from the moment of the first report. From the very beginning, the Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, who was in the thick of things, said that the hijackers of the hijacked Libyan plane had surrendered and taken into custody.
On December 24, 2016, in response, the order issued a statement stating that all personnel reshuffles "are acts of internal government of the sovereign Order of Malta, and the Vatican has no right to interfere in them." His representatives also stated that the decision to investigate was a consequence of misunderstanding, and sent a letter to the pontiff with explanations. Obviously, the legend of the accusation of distributing condoms, some years ago, was invented specifically to prevent widespread discussion, and the theatrical hype with the hijacking of the plane is just an informational cover.
On January 25, 2017, the pontiff accepted the resignation of the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, Matthew Festing. The sovereign council of the order has overturned decrees signed by Festing over the past two months, starting with an order to remove from office the Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Beselager. Thus, Beselager, concurrently manager of the Vatican Bank, again took up one of the most important posts.
The curtain.