Quis custodiat custodes? About a Jesuit in Francis’ inner circle @AntonioSpadaro and his special interest

The Roman writer Juvenal penned in his Satires a line which has become an apophthegm about oversight.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?   Who is keeping an eye on the guards?

This could be a byword today in The Present Crisis.

Who is overseeing the overseers?

Here is an interesting tweet and retweet.

The tweet in question is from homosexualist James Martin, SJ.  You know all about him. Remember, too, that he was chosen to be a Consultor for the Vatican’s office on social communications. In the tweet, below, Martin is pleased that – as he interprets it – the Pope says that parents should leave their “gay” children “as they are”.  That would, of course, please a Jesuit homosexualist activist.

Martin’s tweet was retweeted – I guess with approval, though sometimes we retweet things we don’t agree with – by a member of Francis’ most intimate circle of advisers and surrogates, Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, editor of La Civiltà Cattolica and co-author therein, with a Protestant, of a disparaging article about Americans.

Here’s the Martin tweet Spadaro retweeted.

So, Martin tweets and fellow Jesuit Spadaro retweets.  That’s not so interesting in itself.  You’ve gotta know that birds of a feather… and all that.

What is also interesting, and what most people don’t know, is that Fr. Spadaro has a special interest.

NB: Spadaro is one of the overseers of the overseers.  Never mind that he isn’t a bishop.  If there is a lofty, papal insider, it is he. He is massively influential.  He doesn’t just report on papal policies and messaging, he  shapes them. Remember that he even traveled to Jesuit-run Boston College to help with the Agitprop Conference that helped to shape what I call the New catholic Red Guards?  HERE

Most people know all that stuff.  Here’s what most people don’t know.

Spadaro created and maintains a site dedicated to the Italian author Pier Antonio TondelliHERE http://www.antoniospadaro.net/tondelli.html

Yes, it is the same Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ. If you go to the top index page of the domain, you see him in all his splendor.

So, who was this Tondelli guy who so fascinates Spadaro?

From wiki:

Pier Vittorio Tondelli (September 14, 1955 – December 16, 1991) was an Italian writer who wrote a small but influential body of work. He was born in Correggio, a small town in the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy and died in nearby Reggio Emilia because of AIDS. Tondelli enjoyed modest success as a writer but often encountered trouble with censors for his use of homosexual themes in his works. […] As Tondelli grew older, his reading tastes would develop and in 1974 he began to write his first narratives, saying: “I have always written, starting at 16 years of age with the usual story about adolescent frustrations”. These adolescent frustrations are conflicts between Tondelli’s religiosity, his desire to express his artistry, and his homosexual desires as well as a change in Tondelli’s belief system, in which he writes: “I find it vulgar to pray to God side by side with people for whom God is different from my God.” Tondelli developed a jealousy towards God, who he describes as unique to himself, developing a mysticism all of his own but admitted to losing something as his belief system matured.

It is interesting that Spadaro maintains this personal site about Tondelli and that he has devoted so much energy to this particular Italian writer.

Anyway, I thought it would be helpful to know more about this extremely influential policy-maker – an overseer of overseers – who is constantly at Francis’ side.

And here is a bonus Spadaro tweet.  Translation: “I found such great such great faith in Ireland.  The Irish people has such great faith.  The Irish people know how to distinguish well between the truth and half-truth.”

And, he retweeted himself… which people sometimes do.

Meanwhile, since the Irish are so perspicacious when it comes to truth and half-truth, check this out.  HERE

BTW… I am blocked by Spadaro on Twitter.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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13 Comments

  1. Anneliese says:

    You were blocked? Next he’ll refuse your friend request on Facebook.

    I don’t understand how a priest, who isn’t a bishop, have so much power to influence people. Does the Pope ever make any decisions without seeking the counsel of these people? Can he not discern something for himself?

  2. DeGaulle says:

    Revealing beneath the video of Pope Francis’ lonely drive is the comment by somebody calling himself ‘Irish and Catholic’. Apart from being mildly abusive, he claims that the public were ‘not allowed into’ this area. This immediately impels one to ask how one member of the public happened to be there and why the crowd barriers were installed, perhaps to keep the pope out? This person also ‘liked’ himself, which, for me, does not help his credibility.

  3. Uxixu says:

    Blocked by Spadaro, but not Rosica or Martin… who speaking of which had one notoriously mentioned he was forbidden by his superiors from discussing his sexuality. One naturally about Spadaro and if he ever met Tondelli.

  4. Ave Maria says:

    In Denver a 9 year old boy just committed suicide. It is claimed that he came out as gay and was”bullied”. A 9 year old! A 9 year old boy should still be in his innocent age; he should not know anything about sodomy. It is the adults the (single) mother, the teachers who teach gender confusion to little children in school who are complicit in this death. The little boy had an ear ring and was pushed to dress strange. Cannot imagine the confusion and pain of this child. No one left him “as he was” which was an innocent young boy. This promotion of perversion to little children is child abuse, criminal, and sinful.

  5. maternalView says:

    Time for common sense to reign once again.

    That this Spadaro maintains this website about this particular writer who wrote about particular things tells us a lot about Spadaro!

    Let’s not pretend otherwise.

    Heterosexual men are not interested in homosexual men. Heterosexual men aren’t going to maintain a website about a homosexual writer.

  6. Pingback: VVEDNESDAY MORNING EDITION – Big Pulpit

  7. richiedel says:

    Soon after the release of Amoris Laetitia, all three of my twitter accounts got blocked from following Fr. Spadaro in a matter of like two days. Fr. Rosica is another one who doesn’t suffer opposing voices lightly. I have to say that Fr. James Martin has gotten better at it, though.

  8. Charivari Rob says:

    Regarding the empty “streets of Dublin”…

    It’s a narrow side street near one of his destinations that day, probably near Dublin Castle, where he did pay a brief call on public officials.
    Generally emptier on a Saturday than “regular” work days, Doesn’t seem unusual that they’d mostly close the street for security/logistics. (The advance list of road & transit closures was staggering)
    .
    His planned through routes were publicized – wide city streets. That’s where people would watch.

  9. jaykay says:

    DeGaulle ad Charivari Rob: yes, it’s a narrow street but not at Dublin Castle – it’s across the river at Bow Street, when he was on the way to visit the Capuchin Day Centre for the Homeless. It’s well off the main city centre properly speaking (not that Dublin is exactly big) where the crowds were, as Charivari Rob says. It would be relatively empty at weekends – there’s nothing really there, as you can see from that video.

  10. Charivari Rob says:

    Thank you. Following the video links, some commentor said Dublin Castle. I couldn’t match the video perspective in Google street view, but might easily have missed the correct block, especially not knowing much about the Castle area.
    I was wondering about the other stops on his itinerary. I’m slightly more familiar with the areas of the capuchin center and the procathedral than I am with the Castle and was wondering if it was one of the narrow streets in those areas.

  11. jaykay says:

    Charivari Rob: yes, I saw that , and the commenter was wrong, but I can see why – the narrow Castle Street that goes up by the side of the Castle past City Hall does look a little bit like that shown in the video, at first glance.

    That said, the title on the “HerzMariae” site is just plain misleading: “Francis riding through the streets of Dublin waving to no one.” In fact, the whole, speedy, cavalcade through the City was only 15 minutes and given that he was going to a destination just at the end of that very street, which is a glorified side-street anyway, he was hardly going to bother sitting down. Dear Lord, such sites really don’t do themselves any favours with stuff like that.

    B.t.w., for those who share an interest in such things, it’s also the site of the original Jameson distillery, (mmmm… aaaahhh!). The label on the bottles still reads “Bow Street Distillery, Dublin”, even though that hasn’t been true for almost 50 years now. But you can see the remains of the old stone bond houses, converted into apartments and offices after too many years semi-dereliction.

  12. KateD says:

    Perhaps this is focusing on the minute, but it seems to me odd for a priest to block anyone, let alone a brother priest. I don’t believe Our Heavenly Father will permit us to behave that way towards eachother in Heaven…

  13. Pingback: New book by Jesuit @antoniospadaro about Francis | Fr. Z's BlogFr. Z's Blog

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