{"id":73101,"date":"2015-10-22T10:30:36","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T14:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aleteia.org\/?post_type=post&p=73101"},"modified":"2015-10-22T10:30:36","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T14:30:36","slug":"who-was-behind-those-stories-about-the-popes-brain-tumor-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2015\/10\/who-was-behind-those-stories-about-the-popes-brain-tumor-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Who was behind those stories about the pope\u2019s brain tumor?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Italian media\u00a0are wondering:<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conspiracy theories worthy of a Dan Brown novel sprouted in the Italian media on Thursday, with accusations that Pope Francis\u2019s enemies were looking to undermine him after a newspaper reported he had a brain tumor.<\/p>\n

The Vatican angrily denied Wednesday\u2019s story, calling it irresponsible and inexcusable, but rather than fading out of sight, the saga has inflated into a cloak-and-dagger whodunnit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho wants the pope dead,\u201d the main headline in Il Giornale newspaper said. La Repubblica and La Stampa, both respected dailies, wrote of a \u201cshadow of a plot\u201d on their front pages.<\/p>\n

Most papers concluded that the story was false. But rather than dismissing it as a journalistic error, commentators and churchmen in the land that gave the world Machiavelli, the master of political cunning, looked for hidden intrigue.<\/p>\n

The common denominator was that the pope\u2019s foes within the Vatican and the Catholic Church want to weaken his authority as a pivotal meeting of world bishops on family issues nears its end on Sunday.<\/p>\n

La Repubblica quoted Argentine Bishop Victor Manuel Fernandez as fearing a well-planned \u201capocalyptic strategy\u201d against Francis by conservatives who want to destabilize the Church and block his attempts to change it.<\/p>\n

Leading political columnist Massimo Franco wrote in Corriere della Sera daily that the story was probably \u201chatched in the most murky Vatican underground and was aimed at de-legitimizing the pontiff.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read on.\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Italian media\u00a0are wondering:\u00a0 Conspiracy theories worthy of a Dan Brown novel sprouted in the Italian media on Thursday, with accusations that Pope Francis\u2019s enemies were looking to undermine him after a newspaper reported he had a brain tumor. The Vatican angrily denied Wednesday\u2019s story, calling it irresponsible and inexcusable, but rather than fading out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pope","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nWho was behind those stories about the pope\u2019s brain tumor?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Italian media\u00a0are wondering:\u00a0 Conspiracy theories worthy of a Dan Brown novel sprouted in the Italian media on Thursday, with accusations that Pope\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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