Satan's Prescription For Suffering

For Satan and its kind, nothing good can come out of suffering and therefore suffering must be stopped, and the only way to stop the suffering, according to Satan, is to "prostrate [oneself before] it and worship [it]." [1]  That was what Satan wanted Christ to do after He had fasted for forty days in the desert, when He was physically weak, when He was most vulnerable to Satan's temptations, yet He remained spiritually strong and commanded Satan to "get away." [2]

Similarly, Satan's minions want to give to those who are suffering a cheap variation of Satan's third temptation which was "the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence." [3] This cheap variation consists of the calling of the nations of the world to provide for those who are refugees, poor, homeless and so on.  In exchange, those having received some meager assistance, a decent meal now and then, would then bow to all the comforts of the world that Satan owns. (It is noteworthy that many who are well-to-do also bow to what Satan has to offer them--some even sell their souls for what they think they can get in return.)

For those who are unable to see through the façade of (Satanic) goodwill and generosity will nevertheless see the Godless (secular) version of a cure for suffering, and find it to be laudably humanitarian.  Little wonder Bergolio has his many fans, just as Satan has its throngs of followers self-congratulating themselves while they commit yet-to-be-classified-by-the-Catholic Church sins of secularism and Godless (Satan's) charity (offer of goods without heart that is usually combined with an ulterior motive or two).

In the same way that this Vatican would not want anyone to suffer by calling on nations to help the needy, it would have protested loudly knowing that Jesus would be crucified, and would demand that He not suffer.  Had Christ not ordered Satan to leave Him, Satan would have intervened just as this Vatican would have intervened to prevent Christ from suffering, bleeding and dying and thereby stopping His subsequent resurrection, and as a result man could never die to eternal life because it was by the death and resurrection of Christ that man was saved from eternal death and by the suffering of Christ and the flow Christ's blood that man is able to be cleansed of his Original Sin and its endless variations.

Before continuing, it would be appropriate to take a fresh look at Judas Iscariot.  There are those who believe that Satan had entered Judas Iscariot and as a result, he betrayed Christ.  If, according to this entry's theory above, Satan had entered Judas Iscariot, then he would not have identified Christ by a kiss but rather would have escorted Christ away from the soldiers so that He could not fulfill God's Will.  But Judas Iscariot did betray Christ with a kiss.  Therefore, for the theory to work, this would have to be the conclusion: rather than Satan entering Judas causing him to betray Christ, Judas betrayed Christ out of his own accord, driven by his greedy desire for thirty pieces of silver.  Greed is a temptation that Satan has put out there for man to embrace.  Satan does not have time to enter every man in order for man to accept its seemingly endless temptations and betray Christ, since it is smart enough to give man enough of them that man will answer Satan's beck and call, willingly and happily, by falling into any one or a variety of of Satan's temptations.

Back to this entry's theory, one that seems awfully harsh, almost heartless, uncaring of those who are most in need of help.  In the Judgment of Nation  parable, quoted in part below, are the words of Christ without paragraphs numbers and references [4]:

Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’

Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?  When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’

And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’

Indeed, man ought to take care of one another.  Based on this blogger's reading, this parable applies to each nation, the source of power in every society, in that every one of them ought to treat its people in a way so that they would not hunger, thirst, be rejected, left on the street without proper clothing and shelter and without health care.  And even though there would still be people who would be incarcerated, they ought not to be treated like animals, but with compassion and be visited instead, whether or not those in prison were rightfully convicted, for both the criminal and the wrongfully convicted need someone, preferably a true representative of Christ, to help the former to repent and return to God and the latter to understand and empathize fully with Christ since Christ Himself was unjustly accused, convicted, tortured and put to death.

In other words, this parable talked about what each nation ought to do in the first place, to prevent mass suffering and exodus with refugees wandering the globe without a home, not what needs to be done to fix a mess on the back end, created by not having adhered to words of Christ.

What the parable says is as important as what it does not.   The absence of words in the parable asking other nations to interfere with the internal affairs of other nations that had accumulated certain weapons of mass destruction and had not treated its people well is painfully clear.  To then provide underhanded assistance to activists, i.e., to help organize a community of protesters, causing civil unrest and then bombing them is surely not called for, because it is not for man but for the king in the parable to judge.  Quoted below without paragraph numbers and reference show the absence of such words in the parable [5]:

Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’

Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’

He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’

And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

When man under Satan's influence become judge and executioner, the result leads to more suffering than before the meddlesome actions, including bombings [5], [6].  And it is this suffering that Satan's minions want to end by asking those nations that had created the mess in the first place to fix.  The cycle of introduction to suffering and amelioration of suffering thus begins, and is repeated over the course of human existence: bomb a nation gratuitously then give cheap, inadequate and temporary assistance to its people.  Promises of aids are similar to promises of Satan. They sound good and appear decent at first but in the end they do not last and are worthless.  The pains of loss, of feeling lost and of emptiness seem endless.  Not even a fraction of a degree can such pains be alleviated by humanitarian calls for secular and monetary assistance; they can only be lifted by God.  When God is asked to assist through supplication, suffering turns into grace as the person's compassion deepens at the same time the person's spirit is being lifted.  That is the mark of God's cure: something good comes out of it, but when Satan and Satan's minions produce a "cure," suffering is preserved, if not exacerbated.

In conclusion, as soon as man submits to Satan in exchange for the false promise of the world's kingdoms (modern translation: un-Godly religious influences, political powers and military might), unending suffering ensues.


[1] http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/4 at 9.
[2] Ibid at 10.
[3] Ibid at 8.
[4] http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/25 at 34-40.
[5] From a February 10, 2016, article: "The five-year-old war in Syria has claimed 470,000 lives, according to new research that almost doubles previous estimates about the human cost of the conflict.
"The Guardian  reported details of a report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, due to be launched in Beirut on Thursday, that says life expectancy in Syria has dropped to just 55.4 years. Before the conflict Syrians could expect to live to the age of 70." See http://time.com/4216896/death-toll-syria-war-470000/
[6] From a March 30, 2017, article, quoted without hyperlinks: "The number of refugees who have fled Syria for neighbouring countries has topped five million people for the first time since the civil war began six years ago, according to the UN’s refugee agency.
"Half of Syria’s 22 million population has been uprooted by a conflict that has now lasted longer than the second world war, the figures released by the UNHCR show, with 6.3 million people who are still inside the country’s borders forced from their homes." See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/30/syrian-refugee-number-passes-5m-mark-un-reveals

Courage And Cowardice

Dictionary.com  defines courage as "the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear," [1] and defines cowardice as "lack of courage to face danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc." [2]

This entry defines them differently.  Borrowing words from Dictionary.com, courage is defined here as the heart driven by love "that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear," and cowardice is defined here as the intellectually-calculated and rationalized decisions "that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear" after a careful weighing of risks versus reward.

Christ endured all the pains leading up to and including His crucifixion out of love in His Sacred Heart for God and for man.  At the end, Christ had not gained anymore for Himself than when He had begun, for He was already the Son of God before His Passion and remained the Son of God after it.  In this sense, Christ is the picture of pure courage.

By this strict definition, there cannot be that many people in the history of man who can claim to have the courage equal to that of Christ, for even those seemingly courageous would likely have in the back of their minds some expectation of reward in exchange for a courageous feat (this includes the saintly ones who chose to become martyrs with the expectation of Heaven but excludes those humble enough who never had any expectation of a Heavenly reward), nor can it be said that there has been nobody who had laid down his or her life for the love of another without an expectation of some kind of reward.

A seeming absence of a reward could very easily be mistaken as selfless when on close examination, it is not.  For example, a man who saves his wife by dying is not entirely selfless if he had wanted her to raise their children, or a bodyguard who takes a bullet is not entirely selfless because he is paid to do so, but a man who saves a complete stranger by dying is selfless if he is not otherwise rewarded, and the mother who pushed her daughter out of the way from a vehicle headed toward them had died selflessly with love in her heart. [3]

The first two examples in the paragraph above are harsh. Equally harsh, perhaps or perhaps not, is to call a leader who has the power to send other people to war to die for their country or for an ideology (whether it is democracy or extremism) a coward despite his reluctance to send his own children and lovers first to war or going to the front lines himself.  However, it would be most unconscionable to call a person who enlists in the military voluntarily knowing full well that he could die in an armed conflict a coward based on this entry's definition of a coward despite the person who enlists must have known of the risks and had deliberately weighed such risks before making the decision to enter the military.  On the other hand, the volunteer soldier cannot be deemed courageous because his actions in dying for another would not have arisen out of a selfless love but rather after an assessment of risks and benefits.  In other words, a soldier's death on a battlefield is not the same as the courageous death of Christ on the cross: there is no equivalence.

Christ with His pained and bleeding Heart is the perfect portrait of courage.  In contrast, Satan with his cold, calculating and cunning intellect has to be the epitome of cowardice for Satan would never want to suffer in an incarnated state even though it wants man to suffer in the flesh by selling his soul for false and transient earthly rewards, and then to suffer eternally for finding futility in the repentance of sins and rejecting God with heartless and calibrated disdain.

Courage requires man to come face to face with his enemy, just as Christ came face to face with Satan in the desert and Satan's minions that eventually led to His crucifixion. Courage also requires man to love, not vanquish, his enemy who was once a neighbor.  To do otherwise is to be like Satan, the quintessential coward, whose goal is to destroy man, God's beloved creation, since it cannot destroy God.


[1] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/courage
[2] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/cowardice?s=t
[3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/mother-dies-mother-apos-day-175828136.html

Bergolio's Vatican Hell

The title of this entry is provocative to say the least, but in this blogger's opinion, it cannot be far from the truth (with a small "t") which can be defective and correctable as opposed to God's Truth (with a capital "T") which is perfect and unchangeable.

An article in the blaze  dated May 11, 2017, written by Dave Urbanski entitled  Some Catholic saints ‘were probably gay,’ controversial Vatican consultant says  is quoted in part below [1]:

Father James Martin — a Jesuit priest appointed last month by Pope Francis as a consultant to the Vatican’s secretariat for communications — said some saints “were probably gay.” 

...

In late February, Martin said transgender people should be free to “use whatever bathrooms they choose” because they have to “endure so many indignities already.”

This blogger is not challenging the statement that "some saints 'were probably gay.'" [2]  That may or may not be true but does it matter?  True saints, i.e., God's saints, are chosen to do God's work irrespective of one's identity.  Holiness does not discriminate on the basis of gender, economic status, sexual orientation or even religious beliefs, for holiness is burned into the heart and into the mind, and not found in one's sexual interests which holiness moots.

To change the focus from a saint's unadulterated holiness to a saint's sexual orientation is Satanic.  Only Satan's minions would purposefully deflect one's attention from the purity of God and direct it to something sexual and potentially sinister.  There cannot be a wholesome purpose for having made such a statement other than the unintended consequence which is a showing of the creature's Satanically defiled thoughts.  Bergolio's Vatican is arguably full of such characters whose thoughts had been Satanically influenced, possibly including Bergolio himself.

For Bergolio's appointed creature to also say that "transgender people should be free to 'use whatever bathrooms they choose' because they have to 'endure so many indignities already'"[3]  is to invite rapists and perhaps even killers to pose as transgender people to rape and perhaps even kill women in their bathrooms.  Had this possibility ever crossed this creature's Satanic mind?  Should potential victims be put at risk because of individuals have endured "'many indignities already'" [4]?  Should this creature answer for all such crimes so committed for as long as he lives?  Should his supporters feel guilty should such a crime take place as hypothesized?

They probably ought to but the possibility exists that they would not for they rarely consider themselves to be wrong, if ever, because they usually consider themselves to be vastly superior to the rest, intellectually, morally, ethically and righteously, especially those with whom they disagree, and that just may include God, the Son of God and the Mother of God.

One day, they, like everyone else, will meet their Maker, and perhaps for the first time they will experience the deep pains of humility, and perhaps they will point to the mercy Bergolio had so often talked about, a brand of mercy that this blogger believes to be political, hypocritical and ineffective in front of God's Truth, with a capital "T".


[1] https://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/05/11/some-catholic-saints-were-probably-gay-controversial-vatican-consultant-says/
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.

God And Science

"Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit who directs the Vatican Observatory," [1] said "We must believe in a God [W]ho is supernatural." [2]  He continued to say that God is responsible for man's existence and science proves how it is done. [3]  He then quipped, "'Stephen Hawking said that he can explain God as a fluctuation in the primordial gravity field, [and] [i]f you buy that, it means God is gravity…maybe that's why Catholics celebrate Mass!'"  This blogger would have enjoyed seeing Stephen Hawking chuckle at Brother Guy's remark, assuming that Stephen Hawking had heard it and thought it was funny.

How can any person not believe in Creation?  With all the major advances in the fields of science, nobody is able to create man from scratch.  Until man is able to create man (not by procreation), man has to believe in a Creator, Who is God.

Man ought to be in awe every moment of his life by the very life that he has, be amazed at the many things he is able to do and the many things that are done for him (biologically) without conscious thought, and by his uniqueness.  For example, every fingerprint is different, every one is a work of art and every single one is beautiful, in the same way every being is a work of God, and everyone is beautiful, and everyone is loved by God.

Yet some scientists are so prideful, thinking that science is independent of God, that God and science are mutually exclusive, except that without intellect that is a gift from God, there would be no study of science, and thinking that science is so logical that they have assumed that logic is necessarily built into the universe, except that a logically functioning universe cannot be a product of randomness (the result of some silly big bang somewhere) for randomness, by its very nature, is illogical and unpredictable. Without predictability, there can be no science and without science there can be no scientist, God-believing or not.

Instead of self-adoration, scientists ought to adore God for all the magnificence God has put together, and instead of using science to develop weapons of all kinds that can destroy mankind and the world, scientists ought to celebrate God's awesomeness in their scientific discoveries, to advance civilization, rather than to destroy it, to restore the environment, rather than to agitate it, to guarantee each child born a sense of safety and peace, rather than constant worry and stress, to give each life its satisfaction and fullness that God has intended for man to have, rather than an inescapable and unfulfillable void.

Indeed science can do all of that for the earth has all the elements that the Garden of Eden had.  The Garden of Eden was perfect in the way that earth can be perfect, just as God's Will can be done on earth and it is in Heaven.  Only then can there be peace, in the world and in one's heart.


[1] https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/05/08/top-vatican-scientist-calls-scientists-believe-come/
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.

How The World Could End

The many ways the world could end can be found by a Google search. They range from global warming to incurable viruses, from killer robots to super volcanic eruptions to global warfare. [1], [2], [3]  Of all of the ways, the most likely is probably going to be a combined result of man's own doings, as opposed to an act solely of Mother Nature.

Man can destroy himself because Eve and Adam had eaten the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.  This knowledge allows man to know not only good and evil but also do good and evil, and it is doing evil things that interests him, for evil is incentivized by pride and greed whereas true charity requires self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice is not a virtue in a world dominated by Satanic values.

Satanic values that man has adopted include power and wealth without regard for the sanctity of life of others, yet at the same time he treasures his own.  Unlike Christ, man is timid and he fears.  He compensates for his lack of interior strength by amassing weapons and he overcomes his fears by killing selectively, striking pre-emptively the weak but not the strong, for he fears the retaliation by the strong and therefore recoils at the thought of casting the first stone. Such cowardliness has been demonstrated time and again on the world stage by those with ostensible strength but without intestinal fortitude.

Thoughts and acts of malevolence also take place within academia and research laboratories.  The magazine Discover  listed biotech disaster as one of the "20 Ways the World Could End" which is also the article's title.  It said, "[a]ltered microbes might prove to be unexpectedly difficult to control. Scariest of all is the possibility of the deliberate misuse of biotechnology," [4] as did Stephen Hawking who "warn[ed] that genetically engineered viruses could wipe out entire populations." [5]  In fact, "researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison created a life-threatening virus that closely resembled the 1918 Spanish flu, [and] many disease experts were appalled," [6] so much so that "Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, said: 'It’s madness, folly. If society, the intelligent layperson, understood what was going on, they would say, "What the F are you doing?"'" [7]  The culprit was "Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison [who had] genetically manipulated the 2009 strain of pandemic flu in order for it to 'escape' the control of the immune system’s neutralising antibodies, effectively making the human population defenceless against its reemergence." [8]

Certainly, the Serpent's work is not yet completed.  It enticed woman and man with knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Since then, it has continued to tempt their descendants to use that knowledge to their own demise.  Kawaoka's sinister work is just one example.  There are countless others.  The Serpent will work ceaselessly until man whom Satan despises ruins himself.

Man needs to save himself but first he has to be strong and not succumb to Satan's empty promises; he also needs to be strong enough to humble himself before God and pray that he be delivered from Evil.  But is it already too late for man to save his world?  Of course not, for everything is possible with God.  That does not mean, however, that the world will not end by man misusing his knowledge and abusing his environment and power, turning it into a bomb that could at some point explode.

[1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/end-world-coming-and-here-6541155

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-predictions-about-the-end-of-the-world-2016-1/#nuclear-warfare-1

[3] http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld
[4] Ibid.
[5] http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-predictions-about-the-end-of-the-world-2016-1/#nuclear-warfare-1
[6] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/end-world-coming-and-here-6541155
[7] Ibid.
[8] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-controversial-us-scientist-creates-deadly-new-flu-strain-for-pandemic-research-9577088.html

Godless Millennials

Alex McFarland, writing for cnsnews.com, published a commentary on May 3, 2017, entitled Youth Are Turning Away from God: Churches Peddling ‘Christianity Lite’ Share In the Blame.  Part of it is quoted below [1] [emphasis original] (with this blogger's opinion in brackets):

His research for “Abandoned Faith,” which includes dozens of interviews with teens, twenty-somethings, professed ex-Christians, and religion and culture experts, points to factors like these:

1.  Mindset of “digital natives” is very much separate from other generations. Millennials are eclectic on all fronts—economically, spiritually, artistically. There is little or no “brand loyalty” in most areas. [Not just millennials, many people lack a center.  This center is God.  Without God at one's center, one is easily tempted and trapped by the many worlds of Satan.]

2.  Breakdown of the family. It has long been recognized that experience with an earthly father deeply informs the perspective about the heavenly Father.  [Is the author talking about a biological father or a priestly father?  If he is talking about a biological father, that recognition is in many cases a myth.  If he is talking about a priestly father, that recognition in non-pedophiliac cases could possibly have merit in rare instances.]

3.  Militant secularism: Embraced by media and enforced in schools, secular education approaches learning through the lens of “methodological naturalism.” It is presupposed that all faith claims are merely expressions of subjective preference. The only “true” truths are claims that are divorced from any supernatural context and impose no moral obligations on human behavior. [The Godless media is controlled by Satan.]

4.  Lack of spiritual authenticity among adults. Many youths have had no, or very limited, exposure to adult role models who know what they believe, why they believe it, and are committed to consistently living it out. [In this blog, the word is hypocrisy.] 

5.  The church’s cultural influence has diminished. The little neighborhood church is often assumed to be irrelevant, and there is no cultural guilt anymore for those who abandon involvement. [Christ never intended His Church to be a center for culture.]

6.  Pervasive cultural abandonment of morality. The idea of objective moral truth—ethical norms that really are binding on all people—is unknown to most and is rejected by the rest. [God's Truth is neither objective nor subjective, nor is God's Truth subject to man's judgment or categorization.  God's Truth is simply God's Truth and is undeniable and feared.]

7.  Intellectual skepticism. College students are encouraged to accept platitudes like “life is about asking questions, not about dogmatic answers.” Claiming to have answers is viewed as “impolite.” On life’s ultimate questions, it is much more socially acceptable to “suspend judgment.” [No man ever suspends judgment.  Anyone who claims to suspend judgment is a liar.]

8.  The rise of a fad called “atheism.” Full of self-congratulatory swagger and blasphemous bravado, pop-level atheists such as the late Christopher Hitchens made it cool to be a non-believer. Many millennials are enamored by books and blogs run by God-hating “thinkers.” [It never ceases to amaze this blogger that atheism can only exist with reference to God.  The fact that atheism cannot exist without any reference to God proves that God exists.  Incidentally, atheism is not a fad; it is in this blogger's opinion, a belief and is therefore a religion.]

9.  Our new God, Tolerance be Thy name. “Tolerance” today essentially means, “Because my truth is my truth, no one may ever question any behavior or belief I hold.” This “standard” has become so ingrained that it is now impossible to rationally critique any belief or behavior without a backlash of criticism. [If no one is permitted to question, it is not called "tolerance;" it is called "stubborn Godless self-righteousness."]

10.  The commonly defiant posture of young adulthood. As we leave adolescence and morph into adulthood, we all can be susceptible to an inflated sense of our own intelligence and giftedness. The cultural trend toward rejection of God—and other loci of authority—resonates strongly with the desire for autonomy felt in young adulthood. [Who are the "we" here?  Is there nobody who is humble enough to realize that without God, human intellect would not exist?]

[1] http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/alex-mcfarland/youth-are-turning-away-god-churches-peddling-christianity-lite-share-blame

Knights Of Malta - Season 2

Knights of Malta ended Season 1 with a cliffhanger: who will be the next Grand Master after Fra' Matthew Festing was supposedly ousted by Bergolio?

The start of Season 2 continues to keep watchers in suspense.  Instead of electing a permanent leader to replace Fra' Matthew Festing, who could still return to the cast since he had not been officially been terminated and replaced, the Knights of Malta "[had] elected Fra' Giacomo Dalla Torre with the title of lieutenant of the grand master. He most recently has been the grand prior in charge of the order's Rome chapter. The election was necessary after the former Grand Master of the order, Fra' Matthew Festing was forced to resign after a dispute with Pope Francis over the attempted ouster of an official of the order." [1]

The "lieutenant of the grand master" is not the Grand Master. Grand Master Fra' Matthew Festing who stepped down (in this blogger's opinion) still holds the title of Grand Master, or more accurately Emeritus Grand Master, just as the pope who resigned is still the Pope, but he is now Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI.  There does not seem to be a rule against Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI "un-resigning" himself, nor does there seem to be any precedent stating that a previous Grand Master of the Knights of Malta who voluntarily departed could not be restored to his post.

In this blogger's opinion, the Knights of Malta on Saturday, May 6, 2017, voted not for a person to lead the Order but instead had adopted a "wait and see" approach to the problem, one they chose not to solve but to set aside.  This could not have been the outcome that pleased Bergolio.  In a way, it was a slap in the face, telling Bergolio that the Order still owns its sovereignty, and the fact that Fra' Matthew Festing personally agreed to step down did not mean that the Order had deemed it to be a formal resignation.

At this point, Bergolio has not won, and Fra' Matthew Festing's absence from the Order of Malta has not been made permanent.  The only winner here is the Order of Malta, with its sovereignty still very much intact.  The other character that was pivotal in bringing Season 1 to a close, Albrecht Von Boeselager, seems to have no significant role to play at the beginning of Season 2, which could also indicate that the curtain had closed on Bergolio's histrionics that sent political shock waves through the Order of Malta.

Could an observer looking at the Catholic Church that was instituted by Christ and the Christians that Christ had intended to carry on His work ever imagine all the power politics that are being played by those who allegedly are true followers of Christ?  If it could not have been imagined, then the imagination must rid itself of innocence and purity and substitute in their places iniquity and pride.  Only then, could one imagine what could actually be taking place behind the scenes at the Vatican.


[1] https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/04/29/knights-malta-vote-new-leader-papal-dispute/