MOTZNIK WAS IN LINE TO SUCCEED POPE JOHN PAUL II IN 2005 BUT MADE SAME MISTAKE OF CAMPAIGNING TOO EARLYPITTSBURGH - Pittsburgh City Council member Jim Motznik believed he had the job of Council President all sewn up this past Tuesday but ended up losing the election to Doug Shields in a 7-1 vote. Council members allegedly were upset by Motznik's unseemly conduct in openly campaigning for the job while Mayor Bob O'Connor lay dying at Shadyside Hospital.
This is not the first time Motznik has lost an election by campaigning too early. Achille Cardinal Silvistrini of Rome revealed that in 2005, Motznik was in line to become the first layman elected Pope of the Roman Catholic Church since Callixtus III in 1455 but that he ruined his chances by openly campaigning for the job while Pope John Paul II was on his deathbed.
According to Silvistrini, in the weeks before John Paul II's death in April 2005, Motznik trotted around the globe, going diocese to diocese shaking Cardinals' hands and dispensing cheap plastic pens and rubber "Magic Jar Opener/Bottle Cap Removers" that said: "MOTZNIK FOR POPE." Motznik boasted to reporters that he had commitments from a majority of Cardinals.
But then the inexplicable occurred. At the Papal conclave called after John Paul II's death, Motznik was shut out 265-1. The lone vote for Motznik was cast by Motznik. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope instead.
Motznik reacted to that defeat the same way he reacted this week when he lost the Council presidency. He stormed out of the conclave and telephoned KDKA's Fred Honsberger. "I was lied to by numerous Cardinals," he told Honsberger. "My word is my bond, but these Cardinals have no backbone, and they lied to my face." Then Motznik dropped this bombshell: "I even had the commitment of the new Pope [Benedict XVI]. We shook hands in a roomful of witnesses: The deal was that I would support him to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith and he would support me to be Pope. Then he went back on his word. I can never trust these Cardinals again."
