The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked "chaos" and "turmoil" stemming not only from the "lacking knowledge" about the transmissibility and danger of the virus itself, but from the will of the super-rich to "snatch an opportunity to bring people in line," Gerhard Ludwig Mueller said in an interview with Austria's St. Boniface Institute last week. He is a high-ranking judge at the Vatican court.

The world's financial elites are now using the pandemic and the measures governments take to fight the spread of the virus to subject people to "total control" and establish a global "surveillance state," he added. The St. Boniface published a video showing a small part of the interview and the cardinal has since confirmed to the German dpa news agency that the footage is genuine.