The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damien Thompson.

This week I'm asking a question which I'd really rather not be thinking about.

And it's this. Can Catholics stop their church from destroying itself?

It's a question that would have seemed absolutely inconceivable three or four years ago, but particularly over the last couple of months has now,

sadly, become inescapable. I've been kind of putting off doing a tour d'Orizant of all the

terrible things that are happening in the Catholic Church at the moment. The last Holy Smoke was about

the Pope's dreadful ban on the ancient Latin liturgy, but that has now to be put in context,

and the context is one of a pontificate, but also perhaps also a papacy and even a church

that seems to be falling apart in front of our eyes.

Let's begin with two important court cases.

Two bishops who are extremely close, albeit in different ways, to Pope Francis,

one of them was a personal younger protégé, an Argentinian bishop,

the other his effective chief of staff, now a cardinal, are facing

really serious criminal charges, and in both those court cases, the question of how much Pope Francis

knew is a very pressing one. The first case involving Argentinian bishop Gustavo Zanketta

is in many ways the more straightforward one, and it's also the one in which

the Pope's behaviour is pretty much inexplicable. Let me quote from an authoritative news report

by the Catholic News Agency dated August 7th. It says, Argentine Bishop Gustavo Zanketta will go on trial on sexual abuse charges in October.

The public prosecutor's office of the Argentine province of Salta announced on August 6th

that the trial would take place on October the 12th to the 15th.

Zanketta was given a Vatican post by Pope Francis after he resigned as Bishop of Oran,

...