And Baggio, too, for that matter.

And a couple of others who have not been identified. What a treasure this is: finally we know that evidence of Bugnini’s Masonic membership exists, albeit lying in a dusty vault somewhere under the Vatican.

A priest by the name of Fr Charles Murr has just released a book which documents an investigation into ecclesiastical Freemasonry begun under Pope Paul VI. That’s right, Paul who was by no means a model Pope, had the fortitude to at least start the investigation. But unfortunately, as the books relates, he did not have the stomach to carry through the report’s findings.

Pope John Paul I also read the report but mysteriously died before he could take any action. The report then passed to John Paul II, who simply ignored it. Not very saintly of him, was it?

One wonders about the implications of the hierarchy confronting the fact that the Novus Ordo was created by a Mason. What does that say about the new Mass? What does it say about Traditiones Custodes? (Not what we say – which barely passes muster in polite conversation – but could we one day see a ceremonious tossing of an official Church document into an elegant Italian garbage bin?)

Would we see a very hasty evaporation of the ghastly Spirit of Vatican II as prelate after prelate tries to distance himself from the novelties imposed upon the Church by a Freemason?

No wonder the report has never been released. It would simply create a huge headache for the Church the intensity of which would make the abuse scandals pale into insignificance.

So until the report is opened by some unfortunate prelate, it will gather dust along with the so-called Red Dossier, Benedict XVI’s report into the sexual, moral and financial scandals in the Vatican. Both documents are no doubt mouldering in the archives somewhere near the real Third Secret of Fatima and the first drafts of the McCarrick Report.