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I had never heard of this story before, and it took me a while to get my head around this bizarre and complicated sequence of events.

But I don't understand the angle being put forward here. So Cassini says Diana Vaughan did actually exist and her revelations were actually true? Then why didn't she show up at that meeting? Wouldn't she know that by not showing up, she was discrediting everything she had said? And if she had been murdered beforehand, as it seems is suggested, why wouldn't Taxil say that at the meeting?

But mainly I don't understand why Taxil's writings can be considered true when he himself said publicly that he made all that stuff up?!

In other words, if you don't accept the main events of this story as true, then what exactly do you think happened?

Diana Vaughan did not show up because she was probably murdered by Freemasons.
Here are the reasons why they would do it and what happened after they did it. Some of it I posted before but better all is put in context.

In 1738, a mere twenty-one years after the masonic order first went semi-public in London (1717), Pope Clement XII (1730-1740), condemned Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ in his encyclical letter In Eminenti. This exclusion was extended by Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) in Apostolicae Sedis of October 12, 1869 to include the Carbonari and other secret societies also active in the republican revolution in Italy at the time. In all, the Church has issued twenty bulls warning the faithful against Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ.  The problem is that while giving the appearance of being Christian to the outside world, in fact has inner cores of ruling initiates who are ultimately about the work of the Devil. This was further emphasised in Pius IX’s letter Scite Profecto of July 1873, wherein he attributed masonry to Satan, for he says it can only be he, the eternal adversary of God, who is responsible for it; founded it, and contrived its development. On Nov. 21, 1873 in ‘Etsi Multa,’ concerning this satanic Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ the Pope decreed an ipso facto excommunication (canon 2335) for any Catholic who joined or associated with it, reserving absolution to the Holy See alone. The most comprehensive of all these epistles on Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ however, was Pope Leo XIII’s Humanum Genus (1884), warning of the monstrous doctrines of the socialists and communists while pointing out to individuals in these societies to be aware of the ultimate aims of Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ. At the end of this letter was the invocation of Michael, the prince of the heavenly angels together with Saint Joseph, declared Patron of the Church in the prorogued Vatican Council I (1870), better known in a subsequent ‘Prayer to Saint Michael’ from then on to be said after Mass, a prayer dropped from the new Mass after Vatican II with obvious results. Next, in 1890, in the vernacular encyclical Dall’Alto, addressed to the clergy and people of Italy, masonry was described as pervaded with the spirit of Satan. Another warning came in the Pope’s Custodi of 1892. Addressing the Italian bishops, the Holy Father asserted that ‘the diabolical spirit of all former sects is revived in masonry that attacks everything sacred, while the public, lulled in false security, does not recognise the danger, for Christianity itself is at stake.’

Pope Leo XIII ended his 1884 encyclical Humanum genus by specifying certain actions that could be performed by the faithful in exposing and resisting the aims of masonry. This prompted a deluge of books and newspaper articles with disclosures on Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ, detailing many of their beliefs, activities and influences. Of note were those details written about Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ by a French journalist Gabriel Jogand-Pagès, an anti-clericalist who supposedly converted to the Catholic faith in 1885. Following this, he was solemnly received into the Church when he renounced his earlier works. In 1887 he had an audience with this pope, who then rebuked the Bishop of Charlestown for denouncing the man’s confessions as a fraud. In 1896 Pope Leo XIII sent his papal blessing to an anti-Masonic Congress held in Trent that year. Jogand-Pagès, writing under the name of Leo Taxil, published a sensational story that one branch of Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ called Palladianism was following a form of devil-worship in which a woman named Diana Vaughan was a High Priestess. The masons, however, advancing a public constitution of promoting tolerance, benevolence and fellowship, vehemently denied any connection with Lucifer or that they indulge in sorcery, witchcraft, magic or any such occultism. Soon after her outing as a Catholic convert, came masonic disclosures written under the name of Diana Vaughan herself. Of all the revelations by many authors of the time, some of which were probably gross exaggerations and fabrications, those written under the name of Diana Vaughan suggested they were the most authoritative and revealing of all. In a book A Manual of Sex Magick the author wrote: ‘It was announced that a lineal descendent of the celebrated mystic and occultist Thomas Vaughan of England had been discovered in Paris and that she was a woman of the highest magical attainment. It was not long before a substantial membership had been taken in this Order.’  This was Diana Vaughan herself. The many masonic titles and positions attained by Miss Vaughan before she abandoned masonry on the 19th April 1894 are found in the book ‘ADRIANO LEMMI’ by Domenico Margiotta. 

It seems the problem for the Palladist freemasons arose when - according to Diana Vaughan in her recollections - Joan of Arc, by means of a spiritual manifestation, battled with three of Lucifer’s angelic demons troubling Miss Vaughan because of her promise to a Catholic priest not to blaspheme the Blessed Virgin Mary in any way ever again. This intervention, after much soul-searching, led the woman to convert to Catholicism. Then, feeling deceived and cheated in religious and metaphysical matters up to this time, she tried to make amends by bringing the truth about Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ into the open, hoping to convert all her ‘brothers and sisters’ within the Palladian sect to Christianity. In her 1895 book, ‘Recollections of an Ex-Palladist,’ Diana Vaughan confirmed things that had been written earlier by others but made known new details about the Palladists of the time. For four years Diana Vaughan revealed the origin of modern Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ and gave details of Lucifer’s activity within Palladism as well as the goings-on of named ‘Illuminati.’ Her disclosures were hailed in Rome as a great victory over Hell. St Therese of Lisieux hailed her conversion. The Pope’s Cardinal Vicar wrote to her saying her conversion was ‘one of the most magnificent triumphs of grace that he had ever witnessed,’ and sent, on behalf of the Pope himself, a ‘most special blessing.’ Another Catholic journal wrote: ‘Here we witness a struggle of epic proportions unknown in this world, “hand to hand” spiritual combat between the organised forces of Hell and a humble woman of God, raised up by Him for the task.’
   
The masons did not challenge the details of Miss Vaughan’s facts, but tried only to distort them and to diminish or ruin the extent of their significance. Soon however they changed tactics and with diabolical intelligence put together an ingenious plan. They decided to put out the successful rumour that the Diana Vaughan all had read did not exist in reality. This story prompted Miss Vaughan to announce that she would show herself in public with Leo Taxil in Paris on April 19, 1897. By that fateful day however, Miss Vaughan had disappeared, and Leo Taxil (Jogand-Pagès), obviously knowing she would not show, declared that Diana Vaughan was a fiction, a figment of his own imagination. In one stroke of pure genius, for 99.9% believed him, all the revelations and papal encyclicals on Satan’s direct role in Palladism became the object of doubt and even ridicule thereby losing their credibility. Thereafter Taxil’s ruse to him being Diana Vaughan is written up as one of greatest hoaxes in history, confirmed in many books and numerous websites today. For the vast majority, inside and outside the Church, the matter had ended; the role of Satan in Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ was viewed as pure fiction. Never again did a pope directly condemn freemasonic Luciferianism.

In 1983, however, Cardinal Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation for the doctrine of the faith, declared once again that Catholics who joined Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ were excommunicated.
If anyone is interested I can show you some of the writings of Diana Vaughan.

Thank you for this explanation, but the difficulty here is that Taxil called a press conference at which he would show Diana Vaughan to the world. At this press conference, instead of showing Diana Vaughan, what happened is that Taxil himself showed up and said he had made her existence up completely, and had pranked and trolled the Catholic Church for years with her story, and that his conversion to Catholicism had never been sincere, but that he had only pretended conversion in order to embarrass the Church by writing false revelations of the supposed Diana Vaughan in order to make a mockery of Catholics.

And Taxil appears to be the only source for Diana's existence.

Thus, I have a hard time understanding how one can say Diana did actually exist, when the only person through whom we know of her existence, himself publicly stated he had made her up.

There were those who knew or suspected Diana Vaughan did exist and was a member of an ‘Androgynous Lodge,’ one that admitted women members. In his investigation for example, Craig Heimbichner questions Leo Taxil’s assertion that he invented Diana Vaughan and all those revelations of the highly guarded inner sanctum of the Scottish Rite of Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ.

‘Masons claim that Taxil was simply a disgruntled expelled Entered Apprentice (First Degree) mason who turned on them for base motives. If that is the case, how did Taxil manage to publish accurate details from numerous advanced secret rituals in the higher degrees? This writer can attest to this truth because I possess in my personal archive both Taxil’s original descriptions and the secret rituals themselves. How would a low-level, ex mason have gained these explosive secrets?’ (Craig Heimbichner: Blood on the Altar, Independent History & Research, USA, 2005, p.68.)

Heimbichner then goes on to rebuff Taxil’s other assertion, that only males were freemasons. He quotes the respected masonic historian Robert Macoy, to prove ‘the rules admitted both sexes to membership, the male members were called the “Companions of Ulysses,” and the females the “Sisters of Penelope.” Heimbichner also quotes freemason and Golden Dawn leader A. E. Waite admitting that the Order of the Palladium existed. We are then told of the discovery of the Palladium Temple in May 1895 wherein the owners of rented buildings found a room inscribed with the words Templum Palladicuм. A large tapestry was found in this room upon which was woven a larger-than-life figure of Lucifer. Heimbichner tells of a modern writer, William Schnoebelen (formally OTO IX˚) who said he was inducted into a Palladium Lodge in the late 1970s by a David DePaul. DePaul restarted the Palladium after supposedly invoking the spirit of Diana Vaughan. ‘If Leo Taxil was a hoaxer, then this invocation is difficult to understand since “Diana Vaughan” had been “Priestess of Lucifer” in the freemasonic Palladium rite described by Taxil. If Vaughan was a figment of Taxil’s fevered imagination, why would she be invoked by an OTO (Order of Oriental Templars) faction in the 1970s?’

The idea that Taxil could have been fed fiction by freemasons is not ruled out by Heimbichner, nor that he might have been a double or even a triple agent. He ends his chapter on Diana Vaughan with ‘Is not the OTO the continuation of the Palladium of Diana Vaughan, the “Graduate School” for salivating and serious masons?’ Others however, closer to the woman at the time of her disappearance had their own story. Evidence of her existence was found in a church in Loigny in Northern France that Diana Vaughan had visited in secret in March 1897, one month before her set date for a public appearance.
   
To make a long story short, the parish priest of Loigny confirmed Diana Vaughan’s visit by means of a visual reproduction and also the signature she had left in his church’s log. It was not the name Diana Vaughan that she had signed, for anybody could have forged her name, but Juvana Petroff, a mysterious signature known only to her and the priest to whom it made sense. It was later revealed as her baptismal nom de plume that she took when taking her confession of faith in the church, a name unknown to all but herself and the priest who baptised her.

 I will record some of her writings soon.

Melanie claimed a lot of visions that are pretty dubious. She was expelled from a convent for spending all day telling the townsfolk about her supposed visions instead of doing her duties as a nun. And the text she wrote claiming it was what Our Lady told her in the apparition at La Salette was put on the Index of Forbidden Books, and the Holy Office said it was not authentic and not doctrinally sound. Basically, the Holy Office compared the published text of Melanie with the private one she wrote down as a child and sent to Rome, and put the former on the Index and said it was not the same text as the original secret and not even doctrinally sound.

Melanie is not a credible source.