Everything starts with something that, under normal conditions, would not have gone beyond an anecdote. In a public event broadcast by the official signal of Vatican News, an ambient microphone picks up a confusing phrase. It’s not known who is speaking, nor who it refers to, nor if it has any relevance. It could be a private joke, a technician’s comment, or a loose phrase without much importance. Nothing that, by itself, justifies a scandal.
And yet, the scandal erupts. Not after an investigation, but almost immediately. As if someone was waiting for exactly that. Here the first reasonable suspicion appears: either someone deliberately miked Agostini, or someone asked to be especially attentive to the ambient microphones located near his position. It’s not a conspiracy theory; it’s simple logic. The audio is not discovered by chance a week later: it is detected at the moment and even the author of some whispers is identified, was someone waiting for the opportunity?
And at that point, it’s best to make it clear from the beginning: the center of this story is not the audio, but those who activate the young Marco Felipe Perfetti, founder and director of Silere Non Possum, a recently created media outlet for ecclesial information. Perfetti is a 29-year-old who studied law in Bologna but has ended up inclined toward journalism. He sports a sparsely populated but meticulously trimmed beard and a rainbow bracelet. He is a militant defender on social networks of the LGBT agenda (inside and outside the Church), he defends gay marches and campaigns by labeling other Vaticanists as homophobes on social media, he proudly wears his symbols, and he is someone who in recent times has woven surprisingly good relationships with certain cardinals and curial positions. There are conditions that continue to be an advantage for accessing certain circles in Rome. Coincidences of life: exactly the same environments that Agostini discomforts.
When the audio appears, Perfetti does not hesitate, does not verify, and does not ask. He loads the message. He publishes it. And he pushes it upward. In hours, what was background noise becomes ammunition. The result is fulminating: Agostini, with sixteen years of impeccable service and having passed through three pontificates, is removed without qualms. Not for clear evidence, but for an interested interpretation of a confusing audio. Mercy zero. Prudence zero. Maximum haste. And it is here where many begin to raise an eyebrow: was this really so serious as to act this way, or was it simply the expected moment to settle scores?
Then comes the most revealing part. Perfetti and Silere Non Possum launch themselves on social networks to indiscriminately label traditionalists as closeted, repressed, or frustrated homosexuals, even using a supposed anonymous interview from a cardinal friend of Perfetti for that purpose. It is a reaction as exaggerated as it is childish, as noisy as it is revealing. There is mockery, finger-pointing, and personal disqualification. It is the oldest trick in the world among homosexuals who—by position or function—feel questioned: I may be gay, but you are too and you repress it. Besides being petty, the strategy is ridiculous. That a defender of the LGBT agenda at the helm of a «Catholic» media outlet attempts to discredit the traditional sector of the Church by calling it homosexual demonstrates more nervousness than strength.
Let’s recap, so anyone can understand: a ambiguous audio appears; someone was waiting; that someone activates a media outlet run by a young rainbow activist and turns it into a scandal; the uncomfortable priest falls in hours; and then the narrative is finished off with a campaign of generalized insults. There are too many well-aligned coincidences to be innocent. When the sequence is so clean, so fast, and so convenient, chance is usually the preferred alibi for those who don’t want to explain the method.
But there is something that neither Perfetti nor his allies can control: the reaction of the faithful. They can control microphones, media, and offices. They can have the official Church. But they do not have the trust of ordinary people, who perfectly distinguish between justice and settling scores. The times are changing. They retain the structure; but the living Church—the one that prays, thinks, and is not fooled by crude campaigns—is not with them.