Read The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal Online
Authors: Hubert Wolf
The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal (51 page)
However, using his authority as father confessor, Kleutgen had sworn the nuns and the abbess to secrecy, and this (among other things) suggested to the court that he was the real initiator of the whole poisoning affair.
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He instructed them not to tell in the context of the Apostolic Visitation or the Holy Office’s tribunal anything about the “extraordinary” things that happened to Maria Luisa, or about his relationship with her. And in fact, many of the sisters kept quiet about everything for a long time. By following their confessor’s instruction, some even committed perjury.
This was a monstrous affront to the authority of the highest tribunal. Before the Inquisition, defendants and witnesses were supposed to behave as though they were standing before Christ Himself, the judge of mankind. The investigating judges felt they had come under attack from Kleutgen, and they asked a number of particularly probing questions on this point. At first the Jesuit flatly denied having sworn the nuns to secrecy on the subject of Maria Luisa’s holiness, and all that was bound up with it. But, after being presented with countless witness statements, he eventually had to admit that it was true.
Now Kleutgen started splitting hairs once again, frantically trying to find some theological justification for remaining silent before the court. He finally resorted to a piece of moral-theological pedantry around the principle that a witness only had to answer the specific questions he was explicitly asked. He didn’t have to volunteer information that would incriminate somebody else. Kleutgen claimed this was what he’d meant when he swore Maria Giuseppa to secrecy: he told her she shouldn’t voice her suspicion that Maria Luisa had given Katharina poison
unless she was asked
. Nor did the abbess have any need to speak about those “facts” that Maria Luisa “had revealed to her out of a sense of duty.”
Kleutgen claimed he knew “with pure certainty” that he “never
recommended
to the sisters, as a group or individually, that they remain silent on this or that.” “And still less did I instruct them to conceal the events that had taken place.”
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It was obvious that his statements contradicted each other, and Sallua immediately pointed this out. The Jesuit backtracked and admitted that he was now “getting a little unsure.” “Perhaps” he had told a nun, when she asked, “that she could choose to remain silent on these matters before the authority.” “But
I am sure I did not do this because I believed that the extraordinary will of God provided us with a dispensation in this matter. I may just have applied a principle badly.” In the following interrogation session, he then contradicted this statement, saying that, at the time, it looked “as if God wanted the matter to remain secret for the time being.” “Although this does not release us from our duty to the authority, it could be that God permitted the sisters error.”
Even the inquisitors, who were schooled in theology, did not and would not follow the logic of this tortuous argument. Sallua made no bones about what he thought of Kleutgen’s flimsy excuses, and worked out exactly what his real motives were—with evident enjoyment, as the files show. This had nothing to do with subtle theological principles and possible issues with the pastoral application of ethical ground rules. The Jesuit was simply afraid that if the nuns gave open and honest testimonies, “a trial would be brought about the poison.” Then his own involvement in the whole affair, and in particular his amorous relationship with Maria Luisa, would become public knowledge. It would spell the end of his career in the Catholic Church. This, and nothing else, was what he was desperate to avoid.
In spite of this, Kleutgen carried on making evasive statements. His strategy rested on admitting errors of understanding, but denying errors of will. He was unable to refute the facts that the court presented to him: they were corroborated by numerous witness statements. But he denied having committed these crimes willingly, and with intent. And intent was ultimately impossible to prove in judicial proceedings of this kind. In the end, it was too much for the Inquisition, and they simply recorded that the facts of this case were clear. But Kleutgen refused even to acknowledge this. His characteristic conclusion was:
“I have spoken of my actions, and leave the Holy Tribunal to pass judgment upon them
.”
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THE COURT’S FINAL PROPOSITION
In the case against Joseph Kleutgen, the court considered the following charges had been proven—through partial confessions, witness statements, and circumstantial evidence:
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1. Kleutgen had not only permitted, but also encouraged, the false holiness and the cult of Agnese Firrao, who was convicted in 1816.
2. He had “used numerous unauthorized means to proclaim and support … the feigned holiness of the convicted Sister Maria Luisa Ridolfi.”
3. He had also “permitted a long-running heavenly correspondence to take place.… After you were removed from the convent, you attempted to come into possession of all these letters so that you could burn them, which you subsequently did.”
4. The next charge related to Kleutgen’s pretension that God had chosen him as an “extraordinary minister,” “to protect Maria Luisa as if she were a saint, destined for great things, for the destruction of evil and creation of good. You … gave Maria Luisa eager assistance during her extraordinary malady and her many ecstasies, which lasted for hours.”
5. “You entered the
clausura
in order to perform the extraordinary ministry mentioned above. When she went into a feigned ecstasy, you supported and embraced her many times, kissing her face and sometimes her throat; sometimes you put your tongue into her mouth. At other times you touched her on the chest, on the side of her heart, and performed acts of veneration.”
6. As Kleutgen had also practiced these and other intimacies with his penitent Maria Luisa in the context of dispensing the sacrament of penance, he had become guilty of
“sollecitazione con falso dogma
”—seduction in the confessional, using false dogma.
7. When Maria Luisa claimed to have received money from heaven, Kleutgen regarded this as a miracle and evidence of her holiness.
8. “You arranged for an American, an acquaintance of yours whom you had declared to be possessed, to have contact with Maria Luisa, and allowed him to conduct fanciful, immoral conversations with her, and to write her letters, although these were then ascribed to the devil for their wicked contents.”
9. The court believed there was sufficient evidence to prove that Kleutgen had sworn the nuns to secrecy. He had also imposed this duty on the abbess after he was dismissed as father confessor, telling her to remain silent on anything that he believed could cause harm to a third party.
10. “You practiced intimate acts with Maria Luisa and another penitent known to you.” The court had not been convinced by Kleutgen’s claim that he had always performed these actions “without passion or debauched urges, without affection, not even with slightly impure affection, but using willpower alone.”
11. Furthermore, the Jesuit was found guilty of regarding Maria Luisa’s revelations as genuine, and acting accordingly.
12. “You accepted the truth of prophecies made by Maria Luisa, both verbally and in writing, regarding the illness and death of a novice, and her eternal damnation.” He had also ignored all kinds of justified indications that she was being poisoned, portraying the whole thing as an illusion, and as the machinations of the devil. Interestingly, the court didn’t name the victim here. Nor did it state whether Kleutgen was involved in the attempts on her life.
13. “Finally, you were requested to answer some questions and propositions regarding moral theology and the doctrine of the Church. You gave appropriate answers, but not on all points.” Therefore the Inquisition’s congregation of cardinals had judged his “doctrine and morality in relation to the facts and misdemeanors of the case at hand to be neither honest nor healthy.”
In conclusion, Sallua recorded that Kleutgen had undergone a “properly-conducted interrogation.” He had “essentially” confessed to the misdemeanors with which he had been charged. For the other defendants, this passage stated that they had given complete and detailed confessions. But at least, at the end of his hearings, the Jesuit seems to have indicated that he would submit to whatever judgment the Inquisition passed on him. He was evidently hoping this would result in a degree of leniency.
The main goal of the Inquisition trial—a comprehensive confession
of guilt from the defendant on all charges—was not achieved in Kleutgen’s case, as we may guess from Sallua’s words:
In addition to your answers, you submitted many handwritten pages during these 14 separate hearings, and explained the sequence of facts that relate to you in this case. In a few of these texts, and particularly in the first, you gave a partial spontaneous explanation of the facts of which you were accused, and with which you have been charged. Although your answers sometimes denied these or were incomplete, when you then heard the facts of the case read out, you declared that you did remember them, and confessed to them. Your objections were then confined to a few exaggerations with regard to the nature and the number of these deeds, as you yourself stated.
The sheer number of charges the Inquisition had proved suggested Kleutgen would receive a severe punishment. But would it really hand this man, whose friends included senior members of the Curia, a lengthy prison sentence?
A PROXY WAR?
This was the end of the offensive process for the defendant Joseph Kleutgen. Sallua had now completed his task. The consultors and the congregation of cardinals were asked to judge the Jesuit’s guilt and fix a sentence, based on the
Ristretto
of October 1861.
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But in Kleutgen’s case, this was no simple matter. Just as the father confessor Giuseppe Peters had been revealed as the eminent theologian Joseph Kleutgen, there was another dimension waiting to be discovered behind the Sant’Ambrogio trial, too. There was a much larger issue at stake here: namely, the fundamental orientation of the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century. The key to this secret level is provided by Katharina von Hohenzollern’s new confessor, the Benedictine Maurus Wolter. He had already tipped Sallua off about the ominous Americano’s connection with a certain Kleutgen, during the extrajudicial investigation.
Following her rescue from Sant’Ambrogio, Katharina was just glad to have escaped her convent hell. But, under the sacrament of confession, her new confessor had enjoined her to make a denunciation to the Inquisition. Her
Denunzia
was an act of penance, and a moral obligation, as she emphasized several times. This meant it fulfilled the conditions for the Holy Office to take the case further. Taking revenge on enemies, destroying an opponent’s good reputation, and any similarly base motives had to be ruled out from the start. But what motive could Wolter have had for assigning Katharina this penance? Why did the Benedictine insist she make a denunciation to the highest religious tribunal? Was it really just a matter of obtaining justice for Katharina, and exposing the “Sant’Ambrogio system,” which had already had deadly consequences?
The hint that Wolter provided about Kleutgen’s relationship with the Americano helps to answer these questions. And the fact that a high-ranking cardinal of the Curia like Reisach stepped in to help Kleutgen with his defense suggests that there was much more at stake in this trial than the sexual transgressions of Sant’Ambrogio’s second confessor. It was no coincidence that Reisach went to Tivoli immediately after Katharina had been released from Sant’Ambrogio. He was afraid that something dangerous was brewing there, and he was keen to sound out the situation and rescue what he could from it.
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An entire Church-political and theological faction was on trial in the Sant’Ambrogio case. The members of this faction belonged to a Jesuit network, and their goal was the strict centralization and uniformity of the Catholic Church. Their theological superstructure was provided by new scholasticism. They envisaged an absolute papal monarchy, together with the eradication of all collegial, episcopal, and centrifugal movements within Catholicism. Their piety, set against the background of the new Marian dogma of 1854, was influenced by sentiment, extraordinary religious phenomena, and apparitions—as opposed to the “cold” rationalism of enlightened religious practice.
The first person who should be named as a member of this network is Cardinal Reisach himself. He had placed Katharina in Sant’Ambrogio, and had direct contact with Maria Luisa via Kleutgen. He knew about Sant’Ambrogio’s “secret,” and the plans to use Katharina’s generous dowry to help found an offshoot of the Regulated Third Order of Holy Saint Francis under Firrao’s reform, with
Maria Luisa as abbess. Cardinal Patrizi, whose brother was a Jesuit, was another member. As the convent’s long-serving cardinal protector, he was kept informed of the two saints and their cult, thanks to Leziroli. The fact that he failed to intervene and call a halt to all this meant he at least tolerated it. Kleutgen was also part of the network, as a confessor working “on the ground,” and as the group’s chief theologian. And, last but not least, the pope himself might be added to this list. He had attempted to avoid an Inquisition trial for as long as possible in order to protect his Jesuit friends. When a trial before the Holy Office became unavoidable, Pope Pius IX appointed Patrizi as its head, and made Reisach a cardinal member. This gave them the final say over Kleutgen’s fate. It was a clear signal from the pope of exactly where his personal and political sympathies lay.
Katharina also found herself allied to a political and theological network—though she was probably never aware that this level of the trial even existed. She was rightly convinced of the integrity of her actions. The terrible things that had happened to her in Sant’Ambrogio, the cult of the mother founder and Maria Luisa, with all its excesses, and the fact that more murders could well be committed in the convent, were quite enough to justify her complaint to the Inquisition.