That Article In The Mail

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According to the Mail On Sunday, Archbishop Smith of Cardiff is the name at the head of the terna the Nuncio will send (or has sent) to the Vatican as the preferred candidate for Westminster. It's all a bit odd though.

Neither the Mail, nor Jonathan Petre, the journalist whose byline is on the story, are particularly interested in Catholic stories: so why would this story break in this way. It can't have come from the Nuncio, who is sworn to secrecy in this context, so must have come from "sources close" to him, or to those in the Hierarchy who know the way his mind is turning.

There is a teensy-weensy clue in the journalist's surname. Petre is a distinguished recusant surname. "They" would not want anything to leak out through the Daily Telegraph or the Times: how better, then, to see who would salute this particular flag, by raising it through the old boy network in an unexpected place (for I can't believe many of our Hierarchs are Mail readers).

What does it mean? It means that somebody who thinks he knows what the Nuncio has told Rome has informed a friend or (and/or) kinsman, who has in turn published it. It is instructive that Archbishop Smith's price at Paddy Power remains the same today, at 16/1, as it was yesterday: no money is following this leak.

This ends up being as good a story as the translation of Cardinal Pell, or the retention of the services of PO'D: fascinating; intriguing; and either right or wrong! (I'll guarantee the last cause will be proved accurate.)