MILAN (ChurchMilitant.com) – Leading Italian prelates, including a cardinal, are participating in a “dialogue” seminar with Italy’s leading freemasons to seek reconciliation between Catholic and Masonic values.
Ambrosianum Cultural Foundation
The Grand Orient of Italy, the country’s premier Masonic lodge, announced on its website that the archbishop of Milan, Mario Enrico Delpini, would join Grand Master Stefano Bisi in a symposium on “The Catholic Church and Freemasonry” on Friday.
Archbishop Delpini will be joined by the president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, Bp. Antonio Staglianò, and the retired former head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Legislative Texts, Cdl. Francesco Coccopalmerio, a prelate implicated in a drug-fueled homosexual orgy.
Father Zbigniew Suchecki, a Franciscan expert in Freemasonry and professor of canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Bonaventure in Rome, will also be present at the seminar.
The seminar is being held at the Ambrosianum Cultural Foundation, which describes itself as a Catholic center for dialogue and “an authoritative voice and a space for Christian culture.” The foundation did not advertise the seminar on its website.
Instead, distancing itself from the event, the Ambrosianum Cultural Foundation issued a statement clarifying that it “is in no way involved in the organization of the meeting on Freemasonry and the Catholic Church which many press outlets are reporting on.”
“The Foundation simply rented its space at GRIS (Socio-religious Research and Information Group of the Ambrosian diocese) for a meeting that was announced as being by invitation and behind closed doors,” the statement added.
In a historic first, three grand masters of the three main Italian lodges, including the Grand Lodge of Italy of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons and the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy will join Bisi in dialogue with the prelates.
On Thursday, the Italian Catholic website La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana revealed that the meeting was to be held in secret with “a limited audience and with a ban on access to the press — a sign that the Masonic spirit of secrecy has already infected the top of the Ambrosian Church.”
The website also refuted the claim of the Ambrosianum Cultural Foundation that GRIS had simply rented out the space for the event.
“GRIS has been dealing with Freemasonry for some time, ever since its interest was limited to the sects, it has already organized several meetings in various parts of Italy with the declared objective of mutual knowledge,” LNBQ noted.
The website’s editor, Riccardo Cascioli, explained why the meeting was key to the strategy of the Italian Freemasons in “cleaning up” the image of a secret sect:
The truth is that gestures are worth much more than words, and hence the Masonic lodges, GOI in the lead, are very interested in this dialogue: they have everything to gain because the impression given to [influence] public opinion is that after centuries of condemnations [by the Catholic Church], there is not only the possibility of a reconciliation but also of sharing some values (think of the misunderstandings around the theme of “universal brotherhood”).
According to the program, Abp. Delpini will open the event with a word of greeting and welcome and Cdl. Coccopalmerio will deliver the closing remarks.
Cdl. Francesco Coccopalmerio
Bisi is to deliver the main address titled “Freemasonry between [the reigns of] Ratzinger and Bergoglio” and Giuseppe Ferrari, director of the Observatory on Religious Pluralism will speak on “What dialogue is possible between Catholics and Masons.”
In other sessions, Bp. Staglianò will address areas that are irreconcilable between the Catholic Church and Freemasonry, while Fr. Suchecki’s lecture will explore the topic of Freemasonry in the 1917 and 1983 codes of canon law.
Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Masonic sects has intensified since 2016 after Cdl. Gianfranco Ravasi published an article in Il Sole 24 Ore titled “Dear Brother Masons.”
In 2020, Church Militant reported that Fr. Michael Heinrich Weninger, a clerical staff member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue who was outed as a Freemason chaplain to three lodges, was using his position to recruit Freemasons in the Roman Curia.
The Austrian priest released his doctoral dissertation, Lodge and Altar: On the Reconciliation of the Catholic Church and Regular Freemasonry in Vienna, accompanied by Austrian Lodge Grand Master Georg Semler.
Father Weninger, who insists Catholics can join a Masonic lodge and “certainly not” be excommunicated, claims he has presented copies of his book to Pope Francis, to Cdl. Christoph Schönborn of Vienna and to high-ranking officials in the Roman Curia.
Schönborn responded with “nothing but goodwill,” the Masonic priest bragged.
In Oct. 2022, Msgr. Francesco Antonio Soddu, bishop of the diocese of Terni-Narni-Amelia, outraged faithful Catholics after inaugurating a Masonic lodge along with the grand master of Italy’s biggest Freemasonic organization.
Bp. Francesco Antonio Soddu
Soddu joined Bisi in the ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the GOI lodge in Terni, a city about 63 miles from Rome.
In Oct. 2020, Erasmus, Italy’s Grand Orient Lodge’s journal, acclaimed Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti as being “close to the ideals that have constituted the very foundations of Freemasonry from the very beginning,” Church Militant reported.
The commendation followed an endorsement from Spain’s main lodge, the Gran Logia de España, which claimed that the encyclical “demonstrates how far away the present Catholic Church is from its former positions” and declared, “In Fratelli Tutti, the pope embraces universal fraternity — the great principle of modern Freemasonry.”
Also in 2020, Hiram, Italy’s Grand Orient Lodge’s cultural magazine, extolled Pope Francis’ Abu Dhabi “Human Fraternity” pact with Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyeb as “a turning point in civilization because it will open a new era” if applied.
In November 2023, responding to a question from Msgr. Julito Cortes, bishop of Dumaguete, Philippines, Cdl. Victor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, reiterated the ban on Catholics becoming Freemasons.
Eight popes over the past 200 years have issued 20 legal interdicts condemning Freemasonry. Never have any of the pronouncements been revoked.
Despite the ban on clerics joining Masonic lodges, the DDF has failed to discipline priests, bishops and cardinals openly continuing to support Masonic causes.
