Pope Leo XIV leaves for Montevideo tomorrow. Wednesday’s general audience was the last before the longest trip of the pontificate, and once again we are seeing attributions of literal phrases to the Pope that are not his; it is surprising that we must proceed with such caution before reporting. We begin another intense day.
The catechesis that quotes Francis
Wednesday’s catechesis was the eighth in the block dedicated to Gaudium et spes, within the cycle on the documents of the Council, and was entitled “Faith and social, political and economic life,” covering numbers 63 to 76 of the pastoral constitution. The text is on vatican.va and in B0866.
AgenSIR filed four dispatches, three of which attribute to Leo XIV words that the text itself places in the mouths of others. “War is a failure of politics and of humanity, a shameful surrender, a defeat before the forces of evil” belongs to Pope Francis, Fratelli tutti 261, and the Pope quotes it. “The political community and the Church are independent and autonomous from one another in their own spheres” is Gaudium et spes 76; the “a healthy collaboration is needed” that rounds off the headline is the writer’s. And the third, about unemployment, is not in the text: what is there is the reading of number 67, “unemployment, exploitation and working conditions that endanger health and life itself are unacceptable.”
The farewell before Montevideo
In Italian he said: “The day after tomorrow I will begin my apostolic journey to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru,” and “I ask you to accompany me with your prayers, so that the Lord may bless this mission in countries I hold so dear.” In Spanish he said something else: “Next Friday I will depart for South America.” The circulating headline mixes the two languages and keeps the Spanish “South America.” He named no conflict. Neither Ukraine, nor Gaza, nor the Holy Land, nor Sudan, nor Haiti, nor Myanmar: the call for peace was generic. It is the second time in four days, and we noted it yesterday.
In Polish he recalled the seventy years since the release of Cardinals Wyszyński and Mindszenty, and added that peace is built on justice, respect for the law and dialogue, not on violence. He announced two beatifications for Saturday the 7th: Augusto Rafael Ramírez Monasterio in Antigua Guatemala, and Francisco González de Córdova with seventy-nine companions in Santander, Spain.
Dylan in the Apostolic Palace
Bob Dylan was received by Leo XIV on Wednesday afternoon in the Apostolic Palace. In “Le Udienze” of 4 November there are two entries and neither is his: the president of Chile and the delegation of L’Œuvre d’Orient. A private meeting, therefore, and not protocolled. Four headlines agree on the same details: the Pope gave a rosary, Dylan gave a copy of Chronicles – Volume 1, they sat at a table and Dylan, who is eighty-five, wore a black hoodie with the hood up. Time and duration are not recorded anywhere. They are reported by Nina Fabrizio in ANSA, Adnkronos, Keystone-ATS and Roberta Damiata in Il Giornale. No one quotes a single word from either of them, and what circulates as the Pope’s phrase about Dylan dates from July, from the preface to Disarmata e disarmante. There is no confirmation from Vatican Media photographs: Il Giornale attributes the handshake photo to L’Osservatore Romano.
Silere non possum maintains that Spadaro, under-secretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, is behind it and had been announcing it for days. What it documents is that he accompanied Dylan together with Andrea Monda, director of L’Osservatore, and that he himself spread the news; that he organized it is another matter. Il Giornale is more affirmative and says the audience was made possible through him. That the hood was improper is a judgment of the mainstream media; it is certainly not very proper.
The concert called “of the Vatican”
George and Amal Clooney will take part in the Christmas Concert in the Vatican, according to ANSA and Il Giornale. The hall is inside the walls; the authorship is not.
It is the thirty-fourth edition, on 12 December, in the Paul VI Audience Hall. It is conceived, produced and organized by a private company, Prime Time Promotions srl, according to Il Giornale itself. No dicastery appears as organizer and Vatican Media appears only as international distributor. In 2018, the same concert was presented as promoted by the Congregation for Catholic Education of the Holy See: that patronage has disappeared from this year’s reports and no one has explained it. The international “Peace and Education” award is not for the Clooneys either, but for the Clooney Foundation for Justice, and it is not presented in the Vatican: on 12 December at eleven o’clock, at the Campidoglio. Dylan’s concert tonight at the Palazzo dello Sport is his own tour and has nothing to do with any of this beyond the coincidence of dates.
The eight per thousand outside the Corte dei Conti, by the Italian Court of Cassation
“Otto per mille, vescovi e diocesi fuori dalla Corte dei conti”. What it decides is that the Corte dei Conti lacks jurisdiction over bishops and dioceses for the possible misuse of the funds under article 47 of Law 222 of 1985, so that misuse would only be sanctionable under canon law. The reasoning runs through article 103.2 of the Italian Constitution, which refers to the ordinary legislator the extension of accounting jurisdiction; through article 7, which governs relations between State and Church; through articles 44, 47 and 48 of Law 222, which transfer the quota to the Italian Episcopal Conference, set only generic purposes and leave the annual report as something that is not a judicial account; through article 11 of the Lateran Treaty, whose immunity the Court extends from administrative to jurisdictional power; and through article 6 of the European Convention. That the money comes from income tax does not keep it as a public resource subject to accounting control. The Villa Madama Agreements of 1984 are not cited, which is the first thing one would have supposed. The Court resolves who can judge, not whether there was misuse, and it is not an acquittal. We add that we have not read the ordinance: none of the accessible pieces links or reproduces it, so everything above comes from legal press and there is not a single line in quotation marks from the Court.
The 403,416 euros of Trapani
Beneath there is a case with a name. The Sicilian accounting prosecutor sued the emeritus bishop of Trapani, Francesco Miccichè, and his diocese for 403,416.69 euros of damage to the treasury, for eight-per-thousand funds diverted—according to the accusation—to a diocesan account that he could dispose of without rendering accounts, in events placed between 2007 and 2012.
In criminal proceedings the matter is closed. The Court of Trapani acquitted him on 23 December 2024 of the episode of 2 April 2012 “because the fact does not exist,” and declared the earlier ones time-barred. Prescription is not a pronouncement on guilt or innocence: in those episodes the court did not enter into the merits. Miccichè is not convicted of anything.
In accounting proceedings he had been summoned to trial since 7 July 2025, with the hearing set for 17 December before the Sicilian jurisdictional section. That hearing now remains without a competent court, and the 403,416.69 euros without state jurisdiction to judge them. No source says so, but that is what follows.
More than one billion distributed
The 82nd General Assembly of the Italian Episcopal Conference, meeting in Rome from 25 to 28 May, distributed 1,086,752,778.01 euros: 1,063,069,466.83 as an advance for the 2026 financial year and 23,683,311.18 as regularization on amounts referring to 2023.
The distribution, in millions: 408.2 for worship and pastoral care, of which 158 go to the dioceses, 129 to places of worship, 58 to the catechesis fund and 13 to the regional ecclesiastical tribunals; 394 for the support of the clergy; and 284.5 for charitable interventions, of which 80 for the development of peoples. Outside that total, another 10.4 million from a different fund. It is a figure approved and declared by the Conference itself, not audited by a third party, and it is the amount allocated and distributed, not the amount collected by the State: they are different magnitudes and are easily confused.
The reactions are all ecclesiastical. The secretary general, Giuseppe Baturi, pointed out on 3 September that the ordinance deserves to be highlighted because it addresses for the first time the management of the quota assigned to the Catholic Church, and underlined the inapplicability of public accounting rules. The president, Matteo Zuppi, said on 21 September before the Permanent Council that the Court has recognized the full autonomy and independence of the Church in the management of the funds. From the Italian Government and from the Corte dei Conti itself, nothing.
The strategic plan of Casa Sollievo
Maurizio Varriano published on 4 November in statoquotidiano a column on the hospital founded by Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo. It is opinion, and what it provides are two dates and a proposal: on 6 November there is a meeting and on the 9th, an assembly of workers; and the general management would propose approving the agreements of 2022-2024 and 2025-2027 without arrears, without economic adjustments and without second-level negotiation. He writes it in the conditional and so we report it. Without the conditional he states that there are judicial requirements from workers claiming what is theirs, but he gives no number, no court, no date.
Beneath there are documents. By chirograph of 27 May, published in Bulletin 0446, Leo XIV established a Commission of Direction and Oversight that replaces the statutory bodies of the Foundation in ordinary and extraordinary administration. It is chaired by Maximino Caballero Ledo, prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, and coordinated by Fabio Gasperini, secretary of the APSA, with Paolo Rudelli, Giordano Piccinotti and Giorgio Ferretti as members. The chirograph contains not a single figure. The Pope received the Commission on 31 August. And the general director, Gino Gumirato, maintained in May that the Commission does not imply intervening in the Foundation.
The figures for the hole published by the press range from 220 to 290 million according to the outlet; none is audited data and, as Startmag specifies, the financial statements are not published. There is, however, a document from the Foundation itself with its own figures, hosted on the server of the Work of Padre Pio: the Strategic Plan 2024-2029. Adding the financial liabilities of 2024, the debt with the Region and the debt with personnel reaches about 122 million: half the range published by the press. Either the press adds concepts that the plan does not include, suppliers and litigation among them, or the figures are from a closing after the plan, or the plan under-declares. Which of the three, we do not know. But the document with which to contrast it is published, and that does not happen often.
The Rolexes and a prefect who is not
Il Secolo XIX headlined “Truffa Rolex vaticani, prefetto risarcisce.” Two words give it all its hook and neither points to the Vatican. The prefect is not of a dicastery, nor of the Pontifical Household, nor of an Italian province, where that is the government delegate. He is the prefect of the Turchino section of the Rotary Club of Genoa, an internal club position, the equivalent of master of ceremonies. ANSA unravels it from its own headline, “a processo ex prefetto sezione Rotary.” Il Secolo XIX’s does not.
The accused is Daniel Risso, forty years old, bus driver and until 2025 employee of the Forza Italia group in the Regional Council of Liguria. According to the accusation he presented himself with high-level contacts in the Vatican and convinced his victims that he could get them Rolexes at great discounts, invoking tax advantages and fast delivery; he collected and did not deliver. The first two complaints, from two Genoese lawyers who had met him in the Rotary, total more than 50,000 euros, and the prosecutor speaks of several hundred thousand in total, without quantifying. No piece names an official, an organism or an employee of the Holy See, neither as investigated, nor as witness, nor as injured party. The adjective in the headline qualifies the sales pitch, not the origin of the watches. From the Holy See, no statement, and none has been requested.
The aftermath of 24 October
Four pieces the same day on the traditional Mass and nothing from the Holy See that unites them: having reviewed the bulletins from 1 to 4 November, there is no act, document or declaration on the ancient rite. It is the tail of the refusal of 24 October, which the traditionalist commentary is digesting at the same time. It is not a movement.
Messainlatino headlines “La Messa tradizionale, una Messa normale: parole di un prefetto della Congregazione per il Culto Divino e la Disciplina dei Sacramenti” and the phrase is from 2012. The prefect was Antonio Cañizares, appointed in December 2008 and assigned to Valencia in August 2014, and he said it on the eve of the pontifical Mass he celebrated at the altar of the Chair on 3 November 2012, in the first Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage. The headline does not date it, and the piece, signed “Lorenzo V.,” is a translation of letter 1432 of Paix Liturgique, by Christian Marquant.
LifeSiteNews reports an Indian cardinal who would not oppose the spread of the traditional Mass “provided it did not indicate a rejection of Vatican II.” It is a condition, not an endorsement. The cardinal is Oswald Gracias, and he is archbishop emeritus of Bombay: Francis accepted his resignation on 25 January 2025 and was succeeded by John Rodrigues. He is not a cardinal elector either: he turned eighty on 24 December 2024. LifeSite’s caption calls him archbishop against its own text, and the biographical file of the Sala Stampa continues to list him as archbishop of Bombay in office. The quotations come second-hand, from an interview with AdVaticanum that we have not been able to read.
Roberto de Mattei signed on 4 November in Corrispondenza Romana a commentary that confirms our dates and adds others. The two letters from Paolo Rudelli, Substitute for General Affairs, are dated 7 August and 30 September, addressed to the chaplain of the pilgrimage, Claude Barthe, and respond to requests of 12 June to the Pope and 8 September to Rudelli. Schneider, for his part, says he personally asked Leo XIV to celebrate a pontifical Mass in St. Peter’s during the private audience of 18 December 2025. He gives no protocols: ours, 55,786 and 58,510, remain the only ones published.
He himself declares his thesis a conjecture: the most probable explanation would be the episcopal consecrations of Écône of 1 July. And he distributes blows to both sides: he asks Parolin and his collaborators to reflect on the “boomerang effect” of their decisions, and the organizers that they should have reconsidered Schneider’s role after his statements.
The fourth piece is about another matter. La Nuova Bussola reports that Milan is creating a pastoral coordination for the faithful of the ancient rite, but the rite is the Ambrosian, with the 1954 missal, and therefore is not a matter of Traditionis custodes; and there is no decree, but a letter from auxiliary bishop Giuseppe Vegezzi read on All Saints’ Day, without date or protocol and without official text on the archdiocese’s website. The piece does not name the archbishop, Mario Delpini, to whom Leo XIV extended the mandate by one year.
Where the Pope sleeps, which the program does not say
Gabriela Cicero published on 4 November in Infobae that Leo XIV will sleep in the Palacio Fernández Anchorena of Recoleta, seat of the Apostolic Nunciature in Buenos Aires since April 1952. It was commissioned in 1907 by Juan Antonio Fernández Torres and Rosa Irene de Anchorena, who, settled in Paris, never inhabited it, and it was donated to the Vatican by Adelia Harilaos de Olmos in her will of 13 November 1947, with the condition that it be the seat of the nunciature.
The official program does not say so. Neither there nor in any other stage: the one published on 21 September does not mention at any point where the Pope spends the night, and the only two seats of that type it cites are dinners, one at the Archbishop’s House in Buenos Aires and another at the Nunciature in Lima. That he sleeps at the Buenos Aires nunciature is plausible and is the usual practice, but it is an attribution of Infobae.
From the same program, one day before departure: the visit to the president of the Republic on the 8th, at 17:50, appears without place indicated, and the Polish version includes a lunch with the bishops that same day, at the Jesús Buen Pastor guest house in Florida, which the Italian text does not include. Two official versions of the same document with different content.
Wrapping up the day
Sister Alessandra Smerilli presented on Wednesday in the Press Room the fifth annual report of the Laudato si’ Action Platform: “Care for creation is not a sectoral interest,” and “it does not replace what already lives in the local Churches.” She has been prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development since 1 September, by appointment of 30 June, with Fabio Baggio as pro-prefect and Jozef Barlaš as secretary. Annual report of a platform that already existed: nothing new.
Parolin presented at the Palazzo Borromeo the second volume of Ettore Bernabei’s diaries, Diari. Gli anni della grande speranza (1961-1965), edited by Agostino Giovagnoli, at Rubbettino: “these pages allow us to observe together the scene and the background.” Vatican News’ chronicle brings no revelation; the documented episode is elsewhere and was published by the volume’s own editor in May: the informal channel between the Holy See and the USSR of 1962 and 1963, with La Pira, Fanfani, Dell’Acqua and the Soviet ambassador Kozyrev. That the Pope convinced Khrushchev to withdraw the missiles from Cuba was said by the son at the presentation and is not supported.
Santiago Ignacio De Wit Guzmán presented his credentials on 21 October to the king of the Netherlands. He succeeds Jean-Marie Speich, whose resignation was accepted in February after about ten months in the post, invoking article 20 §2 of the Regulations for Pontifical Representations.
Wednesday’s speech to the delegation of L’Œuvre d’Orient is in French, so the Italian quotations circulating are translations by those who publish them and we do not give them as literal. He named no country: he spoke of the Middle East and of Eastern Europe.
José Antonio Kast appears in Wednesday’s Bulletin as president of the Republic of Chile. Of the content, nothing: CNN Chile expressly says that no details were given of the matters discussed.
And Nico Spuntoni signs in La Nuova Bussola that Vatican communication turns the page with Montserrat Alvarado, who took possession on 1 November. It is expectation: so far neither a cut, nor a reorganization, nor a decision taken. Of her, since then, the only thing on record is Tuesday’s greeting.
Today’s gospel is Luke 15, and for a day of accounts nothing better can be found:
“Light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it.”