We are well into the trolling stage of the current pontificate:
A U.S. archbishop is denying a report claiming that Pope Francis expressed anger towards Fr. James Martin at a meeting of American bishops earlier this month.
The original report, published Thursday by Catholic News Agency (CNA) based on accounts from unnamed bishops who attended the meeting, sparked considerable discussion given the prominent backing Fr. Martin has received from the Vatican under Pope Francis.
In a statement today at the National Catholic Reporter, Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester denies the veracity of the CNA story.
Wester was at the meeting with Samuel Joseph Aquila, Archbishop of Denver; Steven Biegler, Bishop of Cheyenne; Michael John Sheridan, Bishop of Colorado Springs; Stephen Jay Berg, Bishop of Pueblo; Oscar Azarcon Solis, Bishop of Salt Lake City; James S. Wall, Bishop of Gallup; Peter Baldacchino, Bishop of Las Cruces; Thomas James Olmsted, Bishop of Phoenix; and Edward Joseph Weisenburger, Bishop of Tucson, as well as Bishops Emeriti from the area.
According to CNA’s episcopal sources, Pope Francis discussed Fr. James Martin at his February 10 meeting with bishops from the American Southwest. An unnamed bishop said that the pontiff was “most displeased about the whole subject of Fr. Martin and how their encounter had been used.” He added that Pope Francis’s “anger was very clear” and that the pontiff “felt he’d been used.”
Wester, however, says that he was present at this meeting and that “the general tone of the Pope’s responses to issues raised with him was never angry…”
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“[N]or do I remember the Pope saying or implying that he was unhappy with Father Martin or his ministry,” he continued.
The CNA piece stated that Pope Francis had discussed his September 30 meeting with Fr. Martin, a pro-LGBT Jesuit priest, but Wester has stated that it was several of his fellow bishops, not the pope, who brought him up.
Pope Francis’s supposed displeasure with Martin was a strong feature of the CNA article, but Wester says that it was not Martin the pontiff was upset with but “the way others tried to use that encounter, one way or the other.”
“In my view, the language subtlety, yet incorrectly, leads the reader to believe that Father Martin was the issue while in fact it was how others used their meeting that was in play.”
Wester, a strong advocate of Martin’s LGBT advocacy, stressed that he has “no memory at all” of Pope Francis being “angry, upset or annoyed.”
Go here to read the rest. The only thing we can truly believe coming from this pontificate is that truth is usually absent from any account we read emanating from the Vatican.
That the Pontiff would meet with Martin rather than discipline him speaks volumes about the Pontiff, not that we know enough about this disaster of a pontificate already. How do you like having Pope Peron?
I think a close reading indicates that the Pope was unhappy with the way Fr. Martin used the photo of their meeting to promote himself.
Why that was upsetting to Pope Francis is open to conjecture.