The contents of the dossier were shocking.
Writing of Gagnon’s first attempt at placing his dangerous dossier on the state of the Catholic Church’s central Roman government into pontifical custody on 16th May 1978, Father Murr wrote: “I knew very well what this morning meant to the great man seated next to me.”
“After years of intense labour, investigations, research, interviews, organizing and one-on-one encounters with hundreds of people, mostly men, mostly clerics – some, venerable saints and scholars; others, some of the craftiest demons walking the earth – Archbishop Edouard Gagnon now held concrete answers for Pope Paul’s enigmatic and disturbing rhetorical questions …Yes, the unassuming French Canadian had identified quite a number of those nefarious ‘cracks in the wall’ – the ones through which ‘the smoke of Satan had entered’, and was continuing to enter,’ the Temple of God.”
The contents were a black hole of subversion perpetrated by clerical Freemasons, each of whom appeared to have used his powers for treacherous purposes.
When the Holy Father was alone with Gagnon in the Pontiff’s private study, he was quick to get to the bottom line: which of the many items listed therein did Gagnon regard as the most pressing threat to the Church? Without hesitation, the archbishop replied at once: “Page four of the summation. Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio …A Freemason. A Freemason naming every new bishop in the world! And every new archbishop, given a metropolitan See, and many of them guaranteed a cardinal’s hat and a vote in the next papal election. Your Holiness will forgive me for saying this, but a Freemason is orchestrating the next conclave. And for all intents and purposes, Cardinal Baggio is naming your successor.”
Gagnon also identified Cardinal Baggio’s most powerful advocate and political ally. Cardinal Jean Villot, Paul VI’s Secretary of State, had been promoting Baggio for the position of Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Bishops.
Archbishop Gagnon also informed the Holy Father that he had it on good authority that Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who was in charge of the Commission on Liturgical Reform overseeing changes to the Roman Rite Mass and other liturgical practices before and after Vatican II and is still regarded as a dominant force in these efforts, was also a Freemason. Bugnini, on the other hand, had already been expelled from Rome and assigned as a papal nuncio to Iran by the time Gagnon met with Pope Paul.
The perilous state of the Vatican Bank was also a critical issue, one that continues to this day in a parade of ongoing scandals involving cardinals.