Bloomberg has been quick to update their earlier story in which Vatican official Margaret Archer seemed to cast aspersions on the invitation to Senator Sanders to speak at an upcoming conference.
And the conspiracy theorists aren’t going to like it.
Sorry, folks. The Vatican invitation to Bernie Sanders is real. And it’s spectacular.
Not surprisingly, and as all reasonable people already surmised, Archer, the President of the Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican, was simply miffed that the Sanders invitation was extended by higher ups rather than by, you know, her:
The president of the academy said Friday that Sanders didn’t follow proper protocol by failing to contact her office...Archer said that while she “quite liked” Sanders’s program on paper, his failure to contact her first is a breach of protocol.
[See Update #3 below. Archer’s allegations of a protocol breach as well as her allegations she was in any way slighted in the decision-making process have now been publicly denied and publicly termed a lie by her administrative superior, who states the decision to invite Sanders was reached with Archer’s full knowledge, participation, and consent.].
And all that talk of “monumental discourtesy”? Well, it turns out that, again, was all Archer, who felt the fact no one consulted Archer represented said discourtesy...to Archer:
“The president of the academy organizing this event has not been contacted with monumental discourtesy,” she said, referring to herself.
Irked at being thus overlooked, she then went so far as to make the rather impolitic insinuation that Sanders had somehow magically invited himself to the conference.
Fortunately, higher Vatican officials publicly rejected the claim:
The academy’s chancellor said he arranged the invitation and defended the Vermont senator.
Other high-ranking figures concurred, and the Chancellor further elaborated that the invitation is of no recent vintage:
Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the chancellor of the Academy, speaking on the phone from New York, said he extended the invitation to Sanders, though he declined to say who initiated the contacts.
“We are interested in having him because we have two presidents coming from Latin America, I thought it would be good to have an authoritative voice from North America,” Sanchez Sorondo said. Asked when he when the invitation was extended, he said, “Quite some time ago.”
Papal spokesmen did speak out as well, noting that the invitation came from the pontifical academy of social sciences and not from the Pope himself. No meeting between the Vermont Senator and Pope Francis is envisaged “[f]or the moment”.
“For the moment”?
Maybe not, but who’s to know what might change if Bernie plies the right Vatican official with just the right amount of “Birdie Sanders” stickers…
[UPDATE]: h/t to OmahaDemocrat. On the specific claim Bernie “invited himself”, the Chancellor said:
"I deny that. It was not that way," Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo told Reuters in a telephone interview while he was traveling in New York. Sorondo, a close aide to Pope Francis, is the head of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which is hosting the event.
[UPDATEx2]: And, per the always excellent Delphine, here is the actual printed invitation issued by Monsignor Sorondo to Bernie Sanders, not by Bernie Sanders to Bernie Sanders:
The printed invitation is dated March 30, 2016. Today, April 8, Archer laid out the now utterly disproven claim that Sanders “made the first move two or three days ago.” Nope.
[UPDATEx3]: And now (hat tip to seamus) per Reuters, President Archer’s boss and Chancellor of the Vatican Academy of Social Sciences Monsignor Sorondo has publicly called her on the carpet and further denied her false claim that she was not informed and did not participate in the decision of the Vatican to invite Sanders to the conference. Yeah, her credibility is nil now:
A Bloomberg report quoted Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, as saying that Sanders had broken with protocol by failing to contact her office first.
"This is not true and she knows it. I invited him with her consensus," said Sorondo, who is senior to Archer.