Putin’s Got a Little List

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        In The Mikado the Lord High Executioner sings with delight: "I’ve got a little list!" - a list of people to be executed. More than 18 years after the bogus "consecration of Russia," from which any mention of Russia was deliberately omitted (so as not to offend the Russians!), we find that Vladimir ("the Practicing Christian") Putin has a little list of his own: a list of Catholic clergy who will soon be expelled from Russia, joining the bishop and two priests who have already been expelled.

        This latest news of the illusory nature of the "conversion of Russia" constantly extolled by the dupes of Fatima revisionism, comes to us from none other than Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Moscow. On August 23, 2002 CNS reported that Kondrusiewicz "sharply criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for defending the refusal of visas to a Catholic bishop and an Italian priest who had worked in the country for 13 years," and he warned that Putin's statement "appears to signal a difficult future for our church."

        The statement referred to is the Practicing Christian’s recent letter to the Pope in which the Practicing Christian finally responded to the Pope’s inquiry about the expulsion of Siberian Bishop Jerzy Mazur and Father Stefano Caprio. The Practicing Christian informed the Pope that - get this! - the expulsions were "a normal measure adopted by a sovereign state in its encounter with foreign citizens."

       And now the list. According to CNS, "Archbishop Kondrusiewicz later told Poland's Catholic Information Agency that the church in Russia was now in ‘great need of support.’ He said he believed a list had been prepared of other Catholic clergy who would be ‘systematically’ and consistently expelled" from Russia. Kondrusiewicz added that the recent expulsion of Slovak Father Stanislav Krajnak - the third key Catholic cleric to be expelled by the Practicing Christian - was the sign of "an escalation of the struggle against the Catholic Church."

       As reported by the Italian newspaper Avvenire, the Practicing Christian "denied that the expulsions were ‘the fruit of a campaign fomented against the Catholic Church.’" Is that so? Then what was the reason for the expulsion of three Catholic clerics who had broken no law? The Practicing Christian isn’t talking. But his actions speak louder than words: he intends to suppress what remains of the Catholic Church in Russia.

       Welcome to the "conversion of Russia", Year 18! We can place this "conversion" alongside the forty-year-old "springtime" of Vatican II in the Big Lie Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, the Catholics of Russia will continue to suffer at the hands, not only of the Practicing Christian, but the members of the Vatican apparatus itself, who preside over the incredible travesty they have made of the Message of Fatima.