Will Demos II Participate in the Next Conclave?
According to the journalist Luigi Bisignani in Il Tempo of January 26, 2025, the Vatican Gendarmerie knows the name of the mysterious “Demos II,” author of a memorandum very critical of Pope Francis. Perhaps his identity will even be revealed by the time our readers read this reflection by Fr. Alain Lorans, SSPX.
Let’s get back to the facts: in 2024, an anonymous – but very well-argued – document on the current pontificate appeared. As it followed a previous memorandum signed “Demos,” published in 2022, it was signed “Demos II.”
On the death of Cardinal George Pell, on January 10, 2023, the Vaticanist Sandro Magister announced that the Australian prelate was “Demos,” but the real name of “Demos II” remains unknown. This is why he is being hunted by the Vatican police, on the Pope’s orders.
The anger of the illustrious resident of St. Martha’s House is easily explained: the memorandum of Demos II is not only critical; it is programmatic. Widely distributed to the cardinal electors, it sets the objectives of the next pope to redress the catastrophic situation of the Church.
We understand Francis’s nightmarish anguish: Demos II is perhaps a cardinal… who is perhaps an elector… who would therefore be present at the conclave where he could exert an influence on the other electors… especially if he were not one, but two or three.
Clearly, Demos II is trying to avoid the election of a Francis II for the Church. However, the Pope deliberately recruits cardinals from the “peripheries” of the Church, with the hope that they will be “peripheral” enough to remain harmless at the next conclave: odorless and colorless electors.
As a result, the composition of the current Sacred College is a "flat list," a flat list that is sufficiently flaccid to be malleable at will by a few prelates in line with Francis. Which leads a Roman observer to say that Demos II is only being hunted because the next conclave risks being rigged.
Why did Demos II choose anonymity?
Perhaps because he is well placed to know that the supposed parrhesia that the pope demands from his collaborators is in reality a suicidal frankness. Saying what one thinks, what one knows, what one sees, is infallibly condemning oneself to media ostracization, or even canonical excommunication. The future will tell us what fate is reserved for the author of the memorandum, once his identity is known.
(Source : Dici n°453 – FSSPX.Actualités)
Illustration : I, SajoR, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
