The St. Gallen Mafia’s “LGBT” Youth Synod

Crisis Magazine

Julia Meloni

October’s youth synod is about finishing the old business of the St. Gallen mafia. It will mark four years since Archbishop Bruno Forte crafted a manipulated synodal report on the “precious support” found in same-sex relationships—released the very day that two Italian political parties backed homosexual unions.

Pope Francis approved the text before it was published, and his homily that day excoriated “doctors of the law”—an “evil generation”—for resisting the “God of surprises.” Archbishop Forte, meanwhile, declared to the media that “describ[ing] the rights of people living in same-sex unions” is a matter of “being civilized.”

Both men are followers of the late Cardinal Carlo Martini—the “ante-pope” and mafia leader. Martini endorsed same-sex civil unions before his death, after battling Humanae Vitae for years and preaching “discernment” on sexual issues in Night Conversations. In it the Jesuit plotted to use young “prophets” to revolutionize the Church—and said it would “never occur” to him to “judge” homosexual couples, years before Pope Francis’s “Who am I to judge?”

Other mafia alumni—the kingmakers behind Pope Francis’s election—crusaded for “gay Masses,” hailed “gay marriage” laws as “positive,” and tried to make homosexuality “central” to the family synod. Amoris Laetitia’s ghostwriter—the author of Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing—has openly lamented the pushback against the homosexual agenda there.

Amoris Laetitia, as one priest has shown, was really written to legitimize homosexual activity—but Humanae Vitae, natural law, and the Catechism’s language still stand in the way.

This is why Archbishop Forte and Cardinal Baldisseri planned, in prior synods’ working documents, to use young people to revolutionize moralizing language on sexuality (78), permitting a “re-reading” of natural law (30). Last year, Archbishop Forte already explained how the youth synod will develop Amoris Laetitia’s vow to integrate “everyone” (297).

Cardinal Baldisseri recently presented the synod’s Instrumentum Laboris, which lauds conscience for discerning “what gift we can offer … even if maybe not fully up to the ideal.” It says “some LGBT young people” want “greater care from the Church”—pushing the question of “what to propose” to young same-sex couples.

Baldisseri claims this revolutionary first use of “LGBT” by the Vatican merely quotes a pre-synodal document by young people—yet the ideological term never appears there. It’s an ominous disparity, given his history of synodal manipulation.

Another leader behind the Instrumentum Laboris is Fr. Giacomo Costa, S.J.—the Vice President of the Martini Foundation, handpicked by the pope to help lead the synod as a special secretary. Fr. Costa’s writings have promoted same-sex couples’ struggle for “social and civil rights.” He also helped write the synod’s preparatory document, which vows to execute Amoris Laetitia 37’s promise to “make room for the consciences of the faithful,” who “are capable of carrying out their own discernment.”

He and the Instrumentum Laboris are thus promoting Martini’s “School of the Word,” where young people just listen to the Bible for their own answers about God’s will. At the pre-synodal meeting, young Catholics, non-Catholics, and atheists were led in meditation on Jesus’s promise that truth will “make you free” (John 8:32), as explicated by Gandhi (“[God] is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist”) and the Muslim poet Rumi (“You are a copy of the holy Book of God… Look for whatever you want within yourself”).

Fr. Costa then helped oversee the young writers and editors of the pre-synodal text, as shown by photos of teams at work. While those handpicked young people deny a “conspiracy” or “agenda,” a number are aligned with groups militating for a revolution on sexuality.

Their first draft demanded “open-mindedness” on sexuality and the “welcoming” of “everyone” who violates the Church’s “desired ‘standards.’” Their final text said young people “may want the Church to change her teaching” on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, cohabitation, marriage, and the priesthood. While it diplomatically admitted that “many” youths accept these teachings, it announced that what’s “important” is “discussion” with dissenting “convictions” on these “polemical issues.”

One of the four writers behind the first section works as a producer for Fr. Thomas Rosica, a Martini disciple who gave skewed briefings against “exclusionary language” on homosexuality at the family synod. Fr. Rosica recently acknowledged his staff member’s role in the document and said to “really pray” that “the right young people” are delegates at the synod (23:37).

Another one of the four writers—a journalist featured at Crux—represented the Lay Centre. This group tried to influence the family synod by hosting Msgr. Philippe Bordeyne, a participant of a “shadow council” on legitimizing same-sex unions (and an expert at a Vatican seminar for this synod). Both Msgr. Bordeyne and the Lay Centre’s co-founder sit on the board of a Martini-patronized group working to “welcome” homosexual couples.

Before sending its three delegates to the pre-synodal meeting, the Lay Centre hosted Cardinal Tobin, who once welcomed an “LGBT pilgrimage” to Mass and recently said the Church is “moving on the question of same-sex couples.” One young delegate told him about the Church’s “mistakes” in ministering to those “of a different sexual orientation” (38:36). Cardinal Tobin criticized a “cold,” “nominalistic ethic,” saying young people’s “greatest fear” is that the Church “judges them.”

“Now, I think we can correct that, but we’re gonna need help,” he told her (43:04).

She then helped edit the pre-synodal text, saying the meeting showed that “all of us, even if we disagree with Church teachings … are hopeful and still want to be engaged.” She was also trained to fight for “radical inclusion” by Voices of Faith, whose latest conference attacked the Church for being “homophobic and anti-abortion.”

One Voices of Faith delegate helped write the text’s second section lamenting “rules” and “judgment.” Another was surprised by others’ silence on “LGBT” issues, admitting that the question of including “homosexuality and gender” in the text was “contested until the end.”

That section is subversively modeled on the English Facebook group’s pleas for bold, open orthodoxy:

[The Church] must be stable and not “water down” her truths. [The young] want the Church to openly address issues often considered taboo: homosexuality, abortion, birth control, and gender.

Mysteriously, this cry metamorphosed into this:

The young … desire answers which are not watered-down, or which utilize pre-fabricated formulations. We, the young Church, ask that our leaders speak in practical terms about controversial subjects such as homosexuality and gender issues, about which young people are already freely discussing without taboo.

Baldisseri also emphatically told the young writers to “explore the [delegates’] different cultures,” so their first draft avoided “very Catholic things” like Adoration and called Jesus a “historical figure.” Others pushed back, yet there was a “tense point” where the meeting’s organizers expressed their desire that the writers not stay up amending the text.

The “huge online community” requesting the Extraordinary Form of the Mass claims it wasn’t “properly” represented by online moderators, who accused those young people of being a “lobby.”

Meanwhile, Fr. James Martin, S.J., is boasting that “LGBT”—a political term that Cardinal Baldisseri falsely attributes to the young people’s text—is now “harder” to criticize. Fr. Martin’s pro-“LGBT” book has been glowingly endorsed by Cardinal Farrell—a key leader behind the synod and the World Meeting of Families—and Fr. Martin recently headlined a conference organizing young people to lobby the synod, sponsored by an LGBT group that received extensive funding to push the homosexual agenda at the family synod.

Fr. Martin—who dreams of the day when the Catechism’s language on homosexuality will change, priests will be able to “come out” and same-sex couples will be able to kiss at Mass—has been handpicked by the Vatican to headline the World Meeting of Families along with several top revolutionaries, cardinals who’ve already said conscience determines whether one can receive the Holy Eucharist while engaging in homosexual activity, and who’ve already flaunted brazen homosexual-themed events within the sacred spaces of the Church.

We’re clearly in a well-plotted endgame now. According to the men behind Pope Francis’s election—ominously scandal-ridden figures like Cardinal Danneels, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick—the timeline was estimated at just four or five years to “make the Church over again.”

(Photo credit: Cardinal Baldisseri, Pope Francis, and Cardinal Farrell at a pre-synod youth meeting, March 19, 2018; Vatican Media/CNA.)