A Cardinal Speaks Out Regarding the 2013 Conclave Electing Pope Francis

A 35-year-old author, Fabio Marchese Ragona, published on January 22, 2018, a book entitled All Francis’s Men – Tutti gli uomini di Francesco. The book’s preface was written by Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, from Honduras. It was published in the Corriere della Sera.

Although it would be perjury for him to recount the election of the pope, Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga did mention an important detail that made an impression on him:

When the figure of the archbishop of Buenos Aires began to stand out, the famous clerical attitude that Francis often speaks of today revealed itself, spreading a rumor at Santa Marta that Bergoglio was a sick man with only one lung left.

Cardinal Maradiaga went in person to see Cardinal Bergoglio, who was “very surprised to hear that; he assured me that he had no health problems except for a little sciatic nerve trouble and an operation on his left lung to remove a cyst when he was young.”

Were false rumors being spread during an event as important as a conclave with the intention of causing harm or influencing the vote of electors? History goes to show that as divine and holy as the Church may be, she is nonetheless made up of men…