ROME – A petition signed by some conservative Catholics claiming the coronavirus is an overhyped “pretext" to deprive the faithful of Mass and impose a new world order has run into a hitch.
The highest-ranking signatory, Cardinal Robert Sarah, head of the Vatican’s liturgy office, claims he never signed the petition.
But the archbishop who spearheaded it said Friday that Sarah was fully on board, and he has the recorded phone conversations to prove it.
Thus Sarah, the Guinean-born hero to the Catholic right-wing, has landed in another he said-he said controversy, following the polemics over a book he penned with retired Pope Benedict XVI on priestly celibacy that created a huge firestorm this year.