Outside of Italy, Catholics and churchmen have a very kind of mystical view of the Vatican and especially the conclave,

It does seem that somebody wants to indicate that the conclave was a more complex process than was being depicted and that Benedicts mandate was not a slam-dunk,

The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.

In 1870 [during the first Vatican Council], Catholics were struggling with the question of what it meant to be an American; comfortably American in 1965, they now struggled with a more fundamental question: What it meant to be Catholic.

The revelations of the Cloyne report have brought the government, Irish Catholics, and the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture.

It's easy to see the Vatican is wildly inconsistent.