Sad! With USAID Defunded, There's No Money Left to Rig the Conclave
But Progressives Are Scrambling to Come Up With Other Ways to Try
Here at Irkutsk Ice Truckers, we’ve already covered some of the fallout from the defunding of US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the general moves taken by Donald Trump and his administration since he took office.
Funding for promoting Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion and female altar servers (and forcing them on the general population) has long been one of USAID’s priorities. But Trump’s cuts to USAID have ended the payments to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and various dioceses around the country for the extra chalices, female albs, ciboria, medals, bribes, etc,. needed to keep the whole game going.
Kash Patel’s takeover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as its latest director, meanwhile, has ended the mass surveillance and infiltration operations the agency conducted against traditional Catholic parishes.
But the cuts at USAID could hurt progressive hopes even further this time around, as there’s now no bribe money left over to try to influence the results of the coming Papal conclave. The United States, as with many imperial governments since Constantine’s time, has long taken an interest in the Church’s selection of the Popes, and they spend a lot of money and resources, as they do with all elections around the world, to try to influence the outcomes.
In 2013, under Obama’s presidency, the United States, using money funneled through USAID spent around $54 million, or $480,000 per Cardinal-elector, on bribes, threats, hit squads, journalistic influence peddling, etc., to get Pope Francis elected. Under Joe Biden, $87 million had already been appropriated late last year, earmarked at getting Cardinal Joseph Tobin elected. But with Trump’s re-election last fall, this money is no longer available and has been spent on the border wall instead. This had led many panicked progressives like Fr. James Martin instead to start a “Go Fund Me” page to try to raise bribe money themselves, which he calls “Help Us ‘Build a Bridge’ to the Next Progressive Pope.”
The leftist Cardinal Günter Schuster, the Archbishop of Dusseldorf, Germany is also trying to persuade the European Union to re-open an emergency fund for influence money in time for the conclave but the highly bureaucratic nature of the organization is making it look unlikely they will be able to appropriate money in time to really influence the conclave, set as it is to start in around two weeks time. “Unfortunately, the EU has a 56-step process involving a dozen sub-committees for influencing papal elections,” one self-proclaimed Dutch “LGBTQ-MS13 activist” told us. “Doubly bad for us,” he added, “They already spend the money they would have appropriated for a progressive Pope on Ukraine.”
Progressives in the United States have considered “old-fashioned mob action like the Roman crowds used to do” to influence the conclave by sending ANTIFA to Rome. However, the high security around the Vatican, as well as the rumored presence of various armed Crusader militias around its premises, is making them wary.
“The rest of the cardinals may just deliberate unhindered this time and get a ‘trad Pope’, dang it,” Fr. James Martin reportedly bemoaned to a close confidante of his, Cardinal Roche. “Anything else we can do, Art?”
“Could we uh, rig the election or something?” replied the British cardinal and current prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. “Remember, whatever you do can’t visibly involve me; I obviously want to win this thing myself.”
“Hmm, good idea,” replied the Jesuit. “I’ll call up a few voting machine companies and see if we can get a deal on ‘adjustable’ electronic systems for the conclave. Could you find a cardinal willing to pressure the college to use machines at the conclave?”
TO BE CONTINUED!