This traditionalist group is not in full communion with the Catholic Church and has a canonically irregular status.

After making a "unanimous decision," the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Arlington, Texas, said they have "completed the final steps necessary for our monastery to be associated with the Society of St Pius X, who will henceforth assure our ongoing sacramental life and governance," according to a Sept 14 announcement on their website.

Bishop Michael Olson of the Diocese of Fort Worth had offered to reinstate sacramental life at the monastery if the sisters agreed to disassociate themselves from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.

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Speaking to veteran Vatican journalist Franca Giansoldati with Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said he has been candid about his whereabouts because "after the release of my memoir on the McCarrick case in August 2018 a contact of mine from the United States warned me that my life was in danger."

"This is why I do not reside in a fixed place. I don't want to end up like Cardinal Pell, or like my predecessor in Washington, the nuncio Pietro Sambi," he said, referring to the late Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who served as Vatican envoy to the U.S. from 2005 until his death in 2011.

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The conclusion - that some members of the Church have stepped so far beyond the bounds of orthodoxy and propriety that the rest can no longer consider themselves in communion with them - goes back to Antiquity.

Schisms of old could be vicious and violent affairs.

Just consider the cases of the Donatists, Pelagians, Cathars, Waldensians, or Protestant Reformers.

And this is before we get into the internecine struggles within Eastern Christianities and between them and the Latin West.

Pope Francis, Viganò and today's schism

What then to make of Pope Francis' very modern schism: a decision by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to declare Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò guilty of ‘public statements resulting in a denial of the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church' and to excommunicate him?

Viganò, to be sure, had tried Francis' patience over a number of years.

The charges against him are, on one level, quite compelling.

Viganò released a letter back in 2018 which accused the Pope and three consecutive Secretaries of State of knowingly protecting and rehabilitating American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

They protected him even after ‘credible and substantiated' claims that he had sexually abused a 16-year-old altar boy, Viganò wrote.

More recently, Viganò has been vigorously engaged in promoting conspiracy theories: about the Covid-19 pandemic, global elites, and the agenda of Vatican II.

Add in his support for Vladimir Putin's Ukraine War and his ongoing hostility to Pope Francis' attempts to strike a middle ground between Church traditionalists and liberals via the Synod on Synodality.

It was obvious a pretty toxic relationship between the Archbishop and his boss on Earth was emerging.

The Pope and his advisors have clearly decided that acting quickly and decisively was the best course of action.

Take some anguish and criticism now in order to extract the thorn in their sides as bloodlessly as possible.

Not that many have mourned Viganò's departure from ecclesiastical respectability.

His seemingly difficult and abrasive personality have won him few friends in what remains a Church hierarchy regulated by bonhomie and consensus politics.

Viganò is, moreover, not the first bishop to have suffered this indignity on the part of the Holy See in recent times.

John Paul II famously excommunicated Marcel Lefebvre in 1988 because he consecrated four bishops without Vatican approval.

In 2006 Benedict XVI excommunicated the Zambian Bishop Emmanuel Milingo because he had consecrated married men as bishops and himself had claimed to have taken a wife.

Such cases of bishops going rogue have been another constant in ecclesiastical life.

Arguably, it is only the greater scrutiny that they attract in a media age that magnifies the scandal associated with them to a matter of global interest.

Viganò case different

And yet… And yet, the Viganò case differs from the Lefebvre and Milingo ones in several key respects.

First, the fact that Viganò is accused only of wrong words, not wrong deeds.

His criticisms of the Pope have been sharp and nasty.

They certainly transgress the respectable patterns of interpersonal exchange which are typically necessary for subordinates to retain the confidence of their managers in a normal organisation.

"Viganò might have caused less trouble for the Vatican if he'd been left quietly to discredit himself through his increasingly outlandish pronouncements about Vatican II's evils and about his colleagues' hidden agendas.

"Excommunicating him plays to another characterisation of Francis promoted by critics such as George Pell: that he is intolerant of opposition and negative judgments of his conduct."

But the Church is not a normal organisation.

It claims to be, uniquely, the vehicle via which God interacts with Man and through which our souls can achieve eternal salvation.

Clearly, if Viganò had worked at Goldman Sachs or the State department of a normal bureaucracy his position would have been untenable. But should the Universal Church operate by those same rules?

Once again, it is the special, divine character of ecclesiastical activity that is undermined by such unseemly behaviour.

A second difference between Viganò's excommunication and those earlier ones, however, is this.

The eclecticism of Viganò's criticisms of the Holy See (and the Holy Father) also makes it rather risky to isolate him as a matter of politics.

To put it bluntly, his potential for martyrdom is much higher than that of Lefebvre or Milingo.

Sure, criticising the Pope openly and disrespectfully is bad (and even unfair), but Viganò first came to prominence - before his descent into conspiracy theorism - as an outspoken critic of Vatican corruption.

Because few Catholics believe the Vatican is not corrupt at some level, silencing the whistleblower is therefore an inherently questionable proposition, especially undertaken by self-proclaimed ‘clean hands'.

Viganò criticism of Vatican policy towards Theodore McCarrick, moreover, deserves to be taken very seriously - whatever the rebuttals that have emerged to date.

The McCarrick case has been so damaging because it has seemed to confirm an established narrative of feet-dragging under Benedict XVI and also Francis (in light of the Marko Rupnik affair).

Pontifical feet ought to step more gingerly when dealing with notorious failures of oversight and governance.

Ultimately, Viganò might have caused less trouble for the Vatican if he'd been left quietly to discredit himself through his increasingly outlandish pronouncements about Vatican II's evils and about his colleagues' hidden agendas.

Excommunicating him plays to another characterisation of Francis promoted by critics such as George Pell: that he is intolerant of opposition and negative judgments of his conduct.

So will Viganò's departure change the Church? Almost certainly not.

But it will likely confirm what everyone already thinks about Francis, the Synod on Synodality, Gay Blessings, and Traditionis custodes. This is not necessarily good for Francis or for Viganò.

Welcome to the new schismatic Church, same as the old Church.

Only time will tell if Francis' course of action has been the wiser one, but the politicking has got more intensive as both factions - traditionalists and liberals - look beyond him.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the next conclave.

• First published in Eureka Street Republished with author's permission.
• Dr Miles Pattenden is a researcher in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University and author of Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Threat of schism

"I pray that there will be no schism," the Pope told the Vatican press corps, "but I am not afraid."

Since then, the threat of a formal split of dissident Catholics from the Church or the creation of a separate sect has grown to be a major theme of Francis' pontificate.

Conservative and progressive Catholics alike have publicly challenged the authority of the Pope and the Vatican, openly or implicitly hinting at an irreparable fracture in the Church.

Recently the Pope has moved against his critics on the right, excommunicating former U.S. papal nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò for the crime of schism.

He forced Cardinal Raymond Burke, the informal dean of the dissident right, from his Vatican post and removed Bishop Joseph Strickland from his seat in Tyler, Texas, for his anti-Francis agitation, mostly on social media.

For these and other conservatives, the Pope has done too much to reconcile the Church with modern social trends: opening its doors to women who want leadership roles and the LGBTQ+ faithful, restricting the saying of the Old Latin Mass and accommodating Beijing's influence on the Church in China.

Liberal Catholics, meanwhile, claim Francis has done too little to promote inclusivity and accountability in the Church, calling on him to allow women to become deacons and blessings for same-sex couples and to do more to solve the issue of clergy sexual abuse.

These issues have motivated the German church's Synodal Path, a years-long movement to answer popular drift away from the Church with progressive, and largely unsanctioned, reforms.

Schisms are part of Church history

Schism is nothing new in the Church, starting with the Great Schism of 1054, which created the divide between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism before the Protestant Reformation fragmented the Western Church in the 16th century.

The most recent faction to fall into schism was the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, founded in 1970 by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who rejected the changes of the Second Vatican Council and consecrated his own bishops, for which he was excommunicated

Viganò is thought to come the closest to provoking a similar split.

In 2019, as Francis addressed the disastrous aftermath of the clerical abuse crisis in Ireland, Viganò published a fiery document accusing the Pope of covering up the abuse of minors by ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and calling for him to resign.

Since then, he has called Francis "a heretic" and a "tyrant" and condemned the reforms of the Second Vatican Council while drawing closer to conspiratorial and radical wings of the Church.

Setting himself up at the hermitage of St. Antonio alla Palanzana, about an hour from Rome, Viganò drew a crowd of discontented Catholics: evicted nuns, wealthy Italian aristocrats and reactionary priests.

He created an organisation, Exsurge Domine, with the goal of offering help and financial support to clergy who claim to have been persecuted for their traditionalist views.

What now?

Experts say Francis has skillfully dealt with critics on both sides by waiting for the right moment to act and by issuing documents clarifying his most controversial pronouncements.

Massimo Borghesi, a philosopher and author of the 2022 book "Neoconservatism vs. the Field Hospital Church of Pope Francis," Viganò can no longer be considered a representative voice of the conservative opposition to the Pope.

"I don't think that Viganò's excommunication implies a schism," Borghesi told Religion News Service on Monday (July 15).

"It might still concern an absolute minority of traditionalists who believe that the Church in Rome has betrayed the tradition of the Church following the Second Vatican Council," he said, but he has reached the apex of his following in the United States, where he had seen the most support.

"I don't think this interests the majority of the American Church," said Borghese.

According to an April 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center, a three-quarter majority of Catholics in the U.S. view the Pope favorably.

Even though the country's political polarisation is a factor in their opinion — almost nine in 10 Catholic Democrats support Francis, compared to 63 percent of Republican faithful — conservative Catholics recognise that the Pope's election was legitimate, even if they dislike his policies, Borghesi said.

"The conditions for the schism are not there. They are simply awaiting the next Pope," he said.

If Francis had gone after the archbishop in 2019 or 2020, Borghesi believes, he might have created a deeper split.

Instead, he allowed time for tensions to pass and for many of his reforms to be assimilated into Church life.

In the meantime, Viganó's increasingly radical positions have served to alienate his staunchest American supporters, who have stayed mostly quiet since the Vatican's sentence in early July.

"These processes have cooled spirits and allowed more clarity within the Church," he said.

German Synodal Path

Similarly, Vatican chroniclers say, Francis has come through the direst threat from the left, as the German church's Synodal Path has retreated from its most radical positions.

In 2022, German theologian Katharina Westerhorstmann announced she was resigning from the synodal commission that was studying relationships and sexuality because the Synodal Path's rejection of official Catholic doctrine had drifted dangerously toward schism.

"For me there were some discussions that crossed the line, especially the notion where they seemed to have already decided where this was going and that those opinions that didn't fit into that direction, shouldn't really count," Westerhorstmann said.

She and a group of theologians believed that while reforms were necessary to ensure safeguarding for children and vulnerable adults in the Church, certain doctrinal aspects should remain unchanged.

Westerhorstmann told RNS that while a schism was a definite possibility between 2020 and 2021, that is no longer the case today, despite a flare-up last year, when priests in Germany began blessing same-sex couples in violation of Rome's ban on the practice.

"Right now, it seems that the negotiations with the Vatican are going well; there is more openness maybe on both sides," she said.

"In fact, I would say that there is no risk of a schism in the German church anymore at all."

Both extremes now await the next conclave and the future Pope, where the future of the Catholic Church will once again be decided.

Do we care?

Some observers say the greatest threat to the Church today is not passionate dissent but disinterest.

Aurelio Porfiri, author of "The Right Hand of the Lord Is Exalted: A History of Catholic Traditionalism from Vatican II to Traditionis Custodes," warned that while a full-blown schism is unlikely, a different kind of split is already underway.

"Some Catholic circles, not just conservatives, are drawing away from the Church" said Porfiri.

"I would describe this as a schism of indifference, where some Catholics are leaving the Church, not because they object to one particular aspect or issue, but because they are no longer engaged."

• First published in RNS
• Claire Giangravé is an author at Religion News Service.

Gibson wrote a letter addressed to Viganò on the blog of traditionalist publicist Aldo Maria Valli.

In his letter Gibson referred to Pope Francis by his birth name, Jorge Bergoglio, and commended Viganò as a "courageous hero".

"I'm sure you expected nothing else from Jorge Bergoglio.

"I know that you know he has no authority whatsoever - so I'm not sure how this will effect you going forward - I hope you will continue to say mass and receive the sacraments yourself - it really is a badge of honour to be shunned by the false, post-conciliar church" Gibson wrote.

"Of course being called a schismatic and being excommunicated by Jorge Bergoglio is like a badge of honour when you consider he is a total apostate and expels you from a false institution."

Gibson went on to say that the current pope is the schismatic.

"Remember that true schism requires innovation, something you have not done but something that Bergoglio does with every breath.

"He, therefore, is the schismatic!

"However he already ipso facto excommunicated himself by his many public heresies."

Gibson also mentioned that he had built a church where only traditional prayers are held and invited Viganò to celebrate mass there.

He dismissed Pope Francis's authority to excommunicate Viganò and expressed hope that he would also be excommunicated.

Support for Viganò

Since his excommunication, Viganò has garnered support from other prominent figures.

US Bishop Joseph Strickland criticised the Vatican's decision, pointing out the disparity between Viganò's quick excommunication and the lack of action against Theodore McCarrick despite his crimes.

Strickland, who was removed from the leadership of the Tyler diocese in November last year, called for a re-evaluation of the Vatican's actions, suggesting that Viganò's removal was intended to silence him.

Actor Jim Caviezel, known for his role as Jesus in Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," also supported Viganò. Caviezel urged people to pray for Viganò and described him as a fighter for the truth.

The Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith announced Viganò's excommunication, citing his refusal to recognise and submit to both the Pope and the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Viganò waived his right to defence, instead accusing Pope Francis of schism and heresy.

Sources

English Katholisch

CathNews New Zealand

But news that the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith had summoned Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò to answer to charges of schism reveals something of this Catholic moment and Catholic culture.

From 2011-2016, the Italian archbishop served as apostolic nuncio to the United States, and in August 2018, he accused Pope Francis of abuse cover-up in an attempt to overthrow his papacy.

Since then, he has released a series of increasingly extreme statements about the pope, the Vatican, and the authority of the Second Vatican Council from undisclosed locations and via the internet.

He has also pushed conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia, and Ukraine and aligned himself with Donald Trump.

The Code of Canon Law, canon 751, defines schism as "the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him."

For a communion like the Catholic Church, which values unity and obedience to the pope very highly, the idea of breaking visibly that unity, at least as a threat, is appealing in its own way, much like all taboos.

The threat of a Viganò schism, propagated by some of Francis' opponents, is notable as it highlights how papalist the Catholic Church has become, and with it also the notion of schism in relation to obedience to the pope, and recognition of the reigning pope's legitimacy.

Schisms are part of the Church's past

In the past ten centuries in Catholicism, the notion of schism has largely become identified with the notion of "papal schism," that is, the refusal to obey the pope and the rise of a parallel church with its own anti-pope, pseudo-councils, Curia, cardinals, and obedience.

Our notion of schism is still largely a medieval notion, even though other divisions took place in the church in the early modern and modern periods.

However, other forms of schism took place, for example, in monastic communities, with abbots and anti-abbots, such as the monasteries of the order of Cluny in the 12th century.

Schisms are part of the church's past as well as its future; like wars, economic recessions, pandemics, and earthquakes, they are recurring events.

As German historian Reinhart Koselleck has shown, recurring events have a structuring effect on human experience.

Our sense of the past is composed of historical iconography, and schisms are an integral part of our sense of the Catholic form of the Church in history.

Today, the notion of schism is inseparable from the virtualisation of religious identities in online communities that "gather" on social media.

The Viganò online saga, which a Catholic from just 20 years ago or a hermit living off the grid or offline today would have a hard time understanding, helps us realize that there is a pre-and a post-internet history of schisms in the Catholic Church.

And now, we are in a particular moment in the history of the post-Vatican II Church.

The Viganò phenomenon

First, the Viganò phenomenon is an aberration that repositions the most important post-Vatican II rift within Catholicism.

Paradoxically, an old schism is helping us measure this kind of real-virtual potential schism.

The Lefebvrites have publicly distanced themselves from Viganò because he is giving their critique of Vatican II a bad name.

They declared their intention to separate themselves from Viganò's "declaration of sedevacantism" - the position that holds that the current pope is not pope.

This public position of the Lefebvrites is one of the side effects of the Vatican's decision to prosecute Viganò, and it is interesting because it singles out his cartoonish extremism.

At the same time, the Viganò phenomenon contributes to normalizing the position of the SSPX, which has become more mainstream compared to their early years and the 1988 excommunication latae sententiae for ordaining new traditionalist bishops without the approval of the Holy See.

Archbishop Viganò's fanatical statements on Vatican II - "the ideological, theological, moral and liturgical cancer of which the (Francis') ‘synod church' is the necessary metastasis" — make Marcel Lefebvre and the SSPX look like right-of-center Catholics, and not like the extreme traditionalists they actually are.

This says something about the ground shifting under the feet of Vatican II Catholics.

The summoning of Viganò is also a clear message to the approximately 20 American bishops who supported the former apostolic nuncio to the United States and failed to defend the pope during the shocking days of the summer of 2018 when Viganò called for Francis to resign.

Interestingly, that 2018 peak in the tensions between Francis and U.S. Catholic conservatives led some of them to more prudent positions, given the para- or actually pre-schismatic company in which they found themselves.

Amid the "synodal process"

Second, the Catholic Church finds itself in the middle of the "synodal process."

Viganò's tirades and conspiracy theories have to do with Pope Francis as much as with synodality as a key moment in the reception of Vatican II.

We had schisms after Vatican I (the Old Catholic Church) and after Vatican II (the Lefebvrites).

It is possible that there will also be one (or more) after the Synod on synodality.

At Vatican II, some of the compromises between different theological options in the wording of the final documents were the result of fears and threats of a schism. This is happening again now during the Synod, though not out of fear of the Viganò schism but of something bigger.

The prime problem for the Synod is not the sedevacantist extremism of the former papal nuncio but the silent schism of disengagement and disillusionment.

There are also fears of strong reactions of rejection of synodal or post-synodal groundbreaking decisions (for example, on women's diaconate) by some local or continental churches.

The recent refusal of many Catholic Church leaders in Africa to implement Fiducia supplicans on blessings for same-sex couples has been accepted by the same Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith that has now summoned Archbishop Viganò to answer to charges of schism.

Our minor-celebrities culture

Third, it makes perfect sense for the Vatican to deal with Archbishop Viganò formally and officially.

We naively tend to dismiss what happens in the virtual world as something that is unreal and inconsequential.

The accusations of schism against Francis have been published in online statements — one of the longest on June 28, 2024.

However, since his resignation in April 2016, Viganò has created a virtual realm of followers online, with an in-person following that is difficult or impossible to measure, making him no less serious or real.

There is also a lesson here for the enemies targeted by Viganò.

In online Catholicism, social media activities and interactions work more for disruption than for constructing unity.

This has to do with the turbo-capitalistic economy of the self. Taking a selfie with the pope enhances the social media profile but does not help the unity of the Church.

For every Catholic with a social media profile picture showing their photo with the pope, there is a higher number of Catholics who see themselves on the opposite side.

This is our minor-celebrities culture, from which the most active Catholic influencers, even those on Pope Francis' side, are by no means immune. We could learn something important from the Viganò case.

• First published in La Croix
• Massimo Faggioli is a regular contributor to La Croix International with his column 'Signs of the times'.

He was the papal nuncio in Washington from 2011-2016.

In 2018 Viganò reportedly hid after alleging Pope Francis and other senior clerics knew of US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick's sexual misconduct for years and did nothing about it.

He called for the Pope to resign, saying Francis was a "false prophet" and a "servant of Satan."

Summoned to the Vatican

The Vatican rejected the 83-yer old Viganò's accusations of a Vatican cover-up of sexual misconduct. It summoned him to answer charges of schism and of denying the pope's legitimacy.

On Friday, the Vatican doctrinal office said Viganò's public comments showed he refused "to recognise and submit" to the Pope.

Viganò had also rejected the Second Vatican Council's liberal reforms. They were not legitimate, he claimed.

"At the conclusion of the penal process, the Most Reverend Carlo Maria Vigano was found guilty of the reserved delict (violation of the law) of schism" the Vatican said in a statement.

He has been excommunicated from the Church the Vatican announced.

Unrepentant Viganò

In a message on X, Viganò remained unrepentant, publishing the full text of the decision against him, which warned that he could be expelled from the Roman Catholic priesthood if he persisted in his stance.

He urged Catholic faithful to voice their support for him, quoting Jesus in the New Testament: "If they keep quiet, the stones themselves will start shouting".

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernandez, head of the Doctrine of the Faith office, and its secretary Father John Joseph Kennedy, signed the Vatican ruling.

Although - as is usual in such cases - the Pope did not sign the announcement, it is said to be "highly unlikely that the punishment was meted out without his approval.

Attacking the pope

Viganò, who mostly communicates via the X social network, announced last month that he had refused to take part in the Vatican disciplinary proceedings.

"I do not recognise the authority of the tribunal that claims to judge me, nor of its Prefect, nor of the one who appointed him," he said, referring to Fernandez and Francis.

Viganò referred to Francis only by his surname "Bergoglio" and accused him of representing an "inclusive, immigrationist, eco-sustainable and gay-friendly" Church.

The Church has strayed from its true message, he wrote.

Francis has angered many conservatives with his attitude to divorcees and the LGBT community. Mercy and forgiveness should come before the strict enforcement of Catholic doctrine, he says.

Conservatives and traditionalists are also disturbed by Francis' championing of migrant rights, fighting climate change and condemning capitalism's excesses.

Source

• NBC

Canonical criminal trial

The Vatican's Department for the Doctrine of the Faith, led by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, asked that the prelate present himself for an abbreviated canonical criminal trial accompanied by a legal representative.

The Vatican document summons said that Viganò's public denials of Pope Francis' legitimacy and his rejection of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council no longer allow him to be in communion with the Church.

In a statement posted on the website Exsurge Domine, Viganò didn't deny the accusation:

Referring to the Pope, as he often has, by his given name — Jorge Mario Bergoglio — rather than his papal name, the papal critic accused the pontiff of being a "false prophet."

He repudiated the Second Vatican Council, which sought to reconcile the Catholic Church with the changing society and challenges of the 1960s, as "neo-modernist errors."

He dismissed the legitimacy of the trial as well. "I assume the sentence is already ready, given the extrajudicial trial," Viganò wrote.

"I consider the accusations against me to be a matter of honor. I believe that the very wording of the accusations confirms the theses that I have defended on several occasions in my interventions."

Excommunication possible

It remains unclear whether Viganò will attend the trial.

The Vatican document said that if he would not attend, a Vatican canon lawyer would represent him.

If found guilty of schism, he would be subject to "excommunication latae sententiae," an automatic penalty that would prohibit the prelate from performing and receiving the sacraments.

In 2018, Viganò published a lengthy and fiery letter accusing Francis of having covered for Theodore McCarrick, a onetime cardinal and archbishop of Washington, D.C., after men came forward to accuse McCarrick of having committed sexual abuse.

At the time, Viganò said he had repeatedly warned the Church hierarchy of the abuse and called for Francis' resignation.

The Vatican answered by conducting its own investigation into the McCarrick case, which found that the Pope had demoted and punished McCarrick when he became aware of the accusations.

McCarrick, who was already retired, was defrocked by Francis in 2019.

In 2024 a court suspended the trial of the 93-year-old for the abuse of a young man in 1977.

The scandal, however, proved deeply divisive in the church, and Viganò has been living in an undisclosed location.

Pro Trump, Putin, anti Pope

Viganò, an effective Vatican functionary who once served as papal representative in the United States, slowly moved closer to more conservative and eventually conspiratorial wings of the church and American society.

He supported President Donald Trump's claim that the 2020 election had been fraudulent and more recently hailed Russian President Vladimir Putin as the savior of Christianity, while continuing to attack Francis.

"I repudiate, reject and condemn the scandals, errors and heresies of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who manifests an absolutely tyrannical management of power, exercised against the goal which legitimises Authority in the Church," Viganò wrote in his online statement.

In the statement he calls calling the Pope's management of the Church "a self-referential tyranny."

Vatican crackdown

In recent months, Francis and the Vatican have been cracking down on the Vatican's most outspoken critics.

Firebrand Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, was ousted from his diocese last year after an investigation of his statements criticising the Pope.

Strickland's ouster has not diminished his standing as the de facto leader of the conservative faction in the Church.

Papal critic Cardinal Raymond Burke, another American conservative, was stripped of his pension and forced to leave his Vatican apartment around the same time.

Asked to comment on Viganò's statement, the second most powerful prelate at the Vatican, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, told reporters that the archbishop must answer for his public attitudes and actions.

"I am very sorry because I always appreciated him as a great worker, very faithful to the Holy See, someone who was, in a certain sense, also an example.

"When he was apostolic nuncio he did good work," he told Vatican journalists on Thursday.

"I don't know what happened," he said.

• First published in Religion News Service44
• Claire Giangravé is an author at Religion News Service.

This could lead to his excommunication and removal from the clerical state.

On 20th May, senior officers of the Vatican's Dicastery opened an extrajudicial penal trial against Viganó.

The decree states that this process was deemed appropriate without prior investigation, as the evidence was already collected and publicly available.

Archbishop Viganó, a former nuncio to the United States, is accused of making public statements that deny elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church.

The statements include rejecting the legitimacy of Pope Francis, breaking communion with him and rejecting the Second Vatican Council. Such actions are defined as schism under Canon 1364 of the Code of Canon Law. This mandates automatic excommunication for such offences.

The trial is set to follow Canon 1364, which also allows for additional penalties if the gravity of the offence warrants them, including dismissal from the clerical state.

If Viganó is convicted, the penalties will require papal confirmation.

Pope's leadership a "cancer"

Archbishop Viganó was summoned to the Vatican to respond to the charges and presented himself on 20th June. He submitted a written defence, later published on a supporter's blog, describing the charges as an "honour".

In the letter, he referred to Pope Francis by his given name, Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Viganó also referred to his leadership as a "cancer" within the Church.

"It is no coincidence that the accusation against me concerns the questioning of the legitimacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the rejection of Vatican II: the Council represents the ideological, theological, moral and liturgical cancer of which the Bergoglian ‘synodal church' is necessary metastasis" the archbishop wrote.

Vigano considers himself as a successor of the apostles and in full communion with the Church, however he rejects the "neo-modernist heresies of the Second Vatican Council".

A canon lawyer who reviewed Viganó's defence noted that his statements affirm the charges of schism, calling it a clear declaration of separation from the Church. This reinforces the prosecution's case.

The extrajudicial procedure is expected to conclude swiftly. If Viganó is found guilty, his excommunication will be publicly declared and remain in force until he repents. The penalties, including potential dismissal from the clerical state, would then await the Pope's confirmation.

According to Vatican News, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said on Thursday in reaction to the news: "Archbishop Viganò has taken some attitudes and some actions for which he must answer."

Parolin added: "I am very sorry because I always appreciated him as a great worker, very faithful to the Holy See, someone who was, in a certain sense, also an example.

"When he was apostolic nuncio he did good work."

Sources

America Magazine

The Pillar

AP News

Catholic News Agency

CathNews New Zealand

The fractures are most obvious on social media where even priests, bishops and cardinals preach from cyber pulpits all along the theological (or, more correctly, the ideological) spectrum.

Pope Francis recently moved against the latest online episcopal celebrity from the doctrinally rigid end of that spectrum when he relieved Bishop Joseph Strickland from his duties as head of the Diocese of Tyler.

Appointed to the small Texas see in 2012 by Benedict XVI, Strickland has been one of the most vocal critics of the current pope, whom he has publicly accused of undermining the Deposit of the Faith.

Francis like John Paul II and Benedict XVI

The bishop marked his 65th birthday on Halloween by joining other like-minded traditionalists at a conference in Rome where he quoted a letter accusing Francis of being an "usurper".

Using the words of someone else to even suggest the current pope is illegitimate is huge, even by Texas standards. Doing so in the pope's own diocese was a huge and lethal mistake.

Strickland has since gained a few more supporters from among the various anti-Francis critics and crackpots, including non-Americans who probably had never heard of him before he was removed from Tyler on November 11th.

If anybody in the pope's inner circle thought this might in any way lead to a cessation of hostilities towards Francis, they miscalculated.

The pro-Strickland crowd that uses social media as its preferred battleground, have called the pope every name in the book. Dictator is one of their favorites.

Interesting how they have forgotten that Benedict XVI and John Paul II also removed a number of bishops in their days.

The snipers have also attacked Francis and his "magic circle" - including the papal nuncio to Washington, Cardinal Christoph Pierre - for lack of transparency and for refusing to state the reasons why Strickland was removed.

The Roman Pontiff is under no obligation to do so. Benedict and John Paul never did so, either.

No one can hold a candle to Archbishop Viganò

Bishop Strickland is only the most recent high profile Catholic to rail against the current temporal head of the Catholic Church. But he is certainly not the only one.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former nuncio to the United States, was one of the first to really veer off the reservation.

And he did so in a spectacular and unprecedented way in August 2018 when he issued an excoriating open letter urging Francis to resign, accusing him of covering up abuse committed by the former cardinal and now defrocked priest Theodore McCarrick.

No one (at least up till now) can hold a candle to the 82-year-old Viganò, who lobs his deranged rantings and conspiracy theories like bombs in order to discredit the Jesuit pope.

He does this from a secret hiding place, no less, so much does he have the courage of his convictions. It's not too difficult for most reasonable people to see that the attention-seeking Viganò is more than a bit of a "nutter".

We'll have to see if Bishop Strickland, who also seems to like the limelight, intends to follow him down that same road.

After all, he was the first bishop to publicly vouch for Viganò's credibility the very morning the former nuncio issued his open letter attacking the pope.

More credible critics of the pope

But if a loose cannon like Viganò can be easily dismissed, other fierce critics of Francis cannot be.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller immediately comes to mind.

The German theologian and former bishop of Regensburg, who turns 76 on New Year's Eve, is not stupid.

One can disagree with his theological and ecclesiological views, but he represents some of the most classic positions on issues concerning Catholic faith and morals, issues that Francis — legitimately — has opened up for review and reformulation.

Müller, of course, is also the former head of what is now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). Benedict XVI appointed him to the post in July 2012, just months before resigning the papacy.

Francis kept him as head of the doctrinal office after being elected pope in March 213, made him a cardinal in February 2014 at the first consistory of the new pontificate, but then decided not to reappoint him DDF prefect in 2017 when Müller completed his first five-year term of office.

The German cardinal has criticised Francis openly and publicly, most thoroughly in a book-length interview with Italian journalist Franca Giansoldati of the Rome-based daily, Il Messaggero.

He's been more or less respectful in tone, while not hiding his bewilderment at the way the Argentine pope has broken with longstanding Vatican protocols and business-as-usual practices - the same reason why many Francis supporters express their jubilation.

The Synod's way of describing the divisions

There are arguably scores (or more) of bishops and untold numbers of priests who are more sympathetic with some variation of Müller's point of view than with the pope's.

And the lay faithful are all probably over the board. It is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the divisions. But, for sure, the Church is deeply divided.

However, you probably would not draw that conclusion if your first introduction to present-day Catholicism was the "Synthesis Report" that the Synod of Bishops issued on October 28 at the end of the first session of its two-pronged assembly on synodality.

Just take the 42-page text and do a simple word search.

You will find "division" only once in the context of the Church. It's in a section that is listed as number 8, "Church is Mission". In paragraph "f", one finds the following:

In all contexts, there is a danger, that was expressed by many at the Assembly, of "clericalising" the laity, creating a kind of lay elite that perpetuates inequalities and divisions among the People of God.

It would be a stretch to say this is any sort of reference to the current divisions mentioned above.

Similarly, words like "disagreements", "fractures", and "factions" do not appear.

And, for obvious and good reasons, the Synthesis Report - which is inspirational in many ways, but also rather anodyne - avoids naming any sort of "liberal" ("progressive") vs. "conservative" ("traditionalist") tensions or divisions that are, perhaps with the use of more appropriate "labels", a glaring reality in the Church today.

"Labels" is actually found in a section 15 on "Ecclesial Discernment and Open Questions" where it states that, in the Gospels, Jesus "never begins from the perspective of prejudices or labels, but from the authenticity of relationship...".

Meanwhile, the word "controversial" is found six times - three times in reference to "matters", twice regarding "issues", and once for "questions".

Bishops, cardinals, and the next conclave

As for the divisions with the hierarchy the document says this:

"Some bishops express discomfort when they are asked to speak on matters of faith and morals where full agreement within the Episcopate is lacking.

"Further reflection is needed on the relationship between episcopal collegiality and diversity of theological and pastoral views (section 12, paragraph "h")."

Our Catholic leaders, we're told, don't feel comfortable talking about matters about which they disagree.

Once again, this does not seem to properly reflect the reality of what is happening in the Church right now. And that, in and of itself, is alarming.

But divisions there are and, in fact, not a few bishops are publicly giving voice to them, from one side or another (and everywhere in between).

So... what will all this mean when the cardinals are finally called together to elect Pope Francis' successor?

Will they adopt the method of the Synod assembly's Synthesis Report and refuse to acknowledge straightforwardly and descriptively the divisions that exist?

More importantly, on what side of the divide (or where along the spectrum) do the cardinals who will be casting ballots for the next pope line up?

Francis, who will be 87 in a few weeks' time, has named more than 70 percent of the cardinal-electors.

But don't be fooled into thinking they will pick someone who will continue leading the Church along the path he has mapped out.

It may sound strange, but a good number of these cardinals could hardly be called "Francis bishops" in the sense that this term has come to mean.

It is more than likely that they will be forced to choose a compromise candidate. Whether that will be enough to heal the Church's divisions, however, is anyone's guess.

• Rome-based Robert Mickens is La Croix International Editor. He regularly comments on CNN, the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and writes a weekly column, Letter from Rome.
• First published in La Croix International. Republished with permission.

Despite Viganò's shocking call for Pope Francis' resignation, Cordileone was joined by a number of U.S. bishops who bolstered the testimony of the former nuncio. Among them, Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted and Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, all of whom issued personal statements or gave interviews echoing Cordileone's praise of Viganò as a man of faith and integrity.

Today, those same bishops are also driving the controversial efforts aimed at pressing the U.S. bishops' conference to draft a document that will have far sweeping effects to deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support pro-choice legislation.

When the U.S. bishops meet virtually June 16-18, they will vote on whether to proceed with drafting a document on the "meaning of the Eucharist in the life of the church," a proposal championed through a series of pastoral letters, media appearances, personal articles and social media campaigns by the aforementioned bishops.

Yet the manner in which the debate among the U.S. prelates has played out — and the medium in which the body of bishops will hold this debate — has come under scrutiny in recent weeks, including by longtime former staffers at the U.S. bishops' conference and high-ranking Vatican officials who see the rushed debate as a stark departure from Pope Francis' call for dialogue.

In May, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the head of the Vatican's doctrinal office, sent a letter to Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. bishops' conference, urging caution and outlining the necessary process for moving forward with such a document, which included greater discussion among the bishops, Catholic politicians and other episcopal conferences.

In response, 67 bishops sent a private letter to Gomez, which was later leaked, requesting that the vote on whether to move forward with such a document be postponed until the bishops could meet together to discuss the proposal in person. Gomez has informed the body of bishops the vote will proceed without delay.

John Carr, who for a quarter of a century worked as the top policy advisor for the U.S. bishops, described the open display of divisions, both among themselves and with Rome, as "unprecedented."

"The idea that very direct warnings and guidance from the Vatican would simply be seen as an advisory opinion was not part of my experience," Carr told NCR.

"The relentless campaigning for this proposal, the dismissal of other priorities, the leaking of correspondence, the impugning the motives of others is unprecedented in my experience." Continue reading

• Image: NCR

Sarah (pictured), is head of the Vatican's liturgy office and is supposedly the highest-ranking signatory.

However, he claims he never signed the petition.

Sarah's claim is contradicted by the archbishop who spearheaded the petition, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.

Vigano says Sarah was fully on board and he has the recorded phone conversations to prove it.

The virus petition was signed mostly by Italian clergy, academics and journalists.

It is the latest initiative conservatives have used to frame COVID-19 lockdowns as an assault on religious liberty, a threat to the global economy and a conspiracy to separate families.

The petition calls the pandemic a "pretext" by unnamed actors to manipulate and control people through panic and deprive them of their fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of worship.

The petition also says contact-tracing devices, required vaccinations and "criminalised" visits between grandparents and grandchildren are "a disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control."

Vigano is the former Holy See diplomat who achieved notoriety with his 2018 j'accuse of a high-level Vatican cover-up of sex abuse.

He has since reacted negatively to everything from the Vatican's China policy to Pope Francis's outreach to Muslims and the Amazon synod.

Other prominent signatories include three other conservative cardinals who have been critical of Francis' papacy.

One is the ousted prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller and another is the retired archbishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen.

The petition was issued last Thursday, the same day the Italian government and the bishops conference reached an agreement to resume Masses from 18 May so long as strict protocols are followed.

Source

• US News
• Image: CruxNow

"They are devout in the sense that they publicly display their preference for a traditionalist Church and its devotions, such as the rosary.

"They are schismatics because they openly promote the undermining of the bishop of Rome among the Catholic faithful," Massimo Faggioli wrote in a La Croix magazine essay.

The Church's canon law defines schism as "the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him."

Faggioli said the "schismatic instincts" of those bishops were manifest last August when they "sided with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal nuncio to Washington who called on Francis to resign."

Last August Viganò published a "testimony," which accused Francis of ignoring warnings about former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and his sexual deviancy. He claimed Francis not only ignored the warnings about McCarrick, but also promoted him within the Vatican.

Strickland immediately issued a statement calling Viganò's allegations "credible," and Cordileone said he could confirm that some of Viganò's statements were true.

Chaput did not endorse Viganò's allegations. A spokesman said Chaput could not comment "on Archbishop Viganò's recent testimonial as it is beyond his personal experience."

Shortly after Francis was elected in 2013, Chaput said the election had made him "extraordinarily happy, because quite honestly, he is the man I was hoping would be Pope eight years ago."

In 2015 Chaput hosted Francis for the World Meeting of Families.

Reflecting on the meeting in 2018, Chaput said "[Pope Francis] has repeatedly challenged us to bear witness to Christ through concrete action—by serving the poor, by helping immigrants, by preserving families, and by protecting the sanctity of life.

"It's the kind of challenge we can and should answer with a hearty yes each day,".

In his essay criticising "devout schismatics," Faggioli said "Catholicism was exposed to ideological manipulation by those who do not really care for the Gospel, but who are more interested in a particular conservative political culture."

Chaput has frequently emphasised his unwillingness to align with a political party and criticises partisanship within the Church.

In 2016 he criticised Catholics, especially politicians, who accept "the transfer of our real loyalties and convictions from the old Church of our baptism to the new ‘Church' of our ambitions and appetites,' to achieve political or personal goals."

Sourxe

• Catholic Herald
• National Catholic ReporterImage:
• Image:

In a series of emails from an undisclosed location, Vigano told the Washington Post that Francis and Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI must come clean about what they knew of McCarrick's alleged decades of abuse.

It is "immensely sad" that Francis was "blatantly lying to the whole world to cover up his wicked deeds" in allegedly protecting McCarrick, Vigano says.

He is firm in his claims that he warned Francis in 2013 about McCarrick.

"How could anybody, especially a pope, forget this?" he said in his emails.

Vigano, who upset the Vatican over years with accusations of corruption and abuse at the highest levels, disappeared last August after publishing an 11-page attack on Francis and Benedict over McCarrick.

In that open letter, he said he warned church leaders in 2006 about allegations that McCarrick engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct and abuse with male seminarians over a period of decades.

It was necessary for him to speak out, he says.

"My silence would make me complicit with the abusers, and lead to yet more victims.

"The results of an honest investigation would be disastrous for the current papacy."

He also said deeply embedded "homosexual networks" ... "are strangling the entire church."

Vigano wants Francis to resign over his alleged silence.

Francis - who has become more vocal in calling for the church to be honest and open about the priest sex scandals, has consistently rejected the criticism, denying he knew McCarrick's transgressions.

Source

• Raw Story
• Image: CBS News

The truncated transcript of Francis's lengthy interview with Mexico's Televisa reporter, Valentina Alazaraki, claimed Francis said he didn't know anything about accusations of McCarrick's sexual abuse before the accusations became public last year.

What it omitted, was Francis's claim that he didn't remember former nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, telling him in 2013 of McCarrick's penchant for sleeping with seminarians.

Communications coordinator Andrea Tornielli says the discrepancy was due to the quick turnaround time given to translating the interview from Spanish into Italian.

The original Spanish was considered the text of reference, he says.

Within minutes of being questioned about the Italian transcript, the full and corrected version of the quote appeared on the Italian site of the Vatican news portal, Vatican News.

In the interview Francis told Alazaraki he would have immediately spoken out if he had known about McCarrick.

When he did find out last year, he acted against McCarrick both before and after the Vatican process.

Before the process, he removed him from the College of Cardinals.

After it, when he was found guilty of solicitation in the Sacrament of Penance and "sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults," he dismissed him from the clerical state.

Vigano's allegations have been used by Francis' conservative critics to attack him.

The allegations appear to show Francis disregarded information that McCarrick preyed on seminarians and instead rehabilitated him from the restrictions Pope Benedict XVI imposed in 2008.

As a result, Francis' claim not to remember if Vigano told him about McCarrick now amounts to his defence against such criticism.

Last year, the Vatican communications office published a doctored photograph and a partial quote from a letter penned by retired Pope Benedict XVI that misrepresented its complete meaning. The then-prefect of the communications office had to resign as a result.

Source

• AP
• CNA
• America Magazine
• The Tablet
• Image: Zenit

Lorenzo had taken out a civil lawsuit opposing his brother's management of a "conspicuous family inheritance."

The ruling was issued by Judge Susanna Terni after hearing the case in the civil tribunal of Milan in mid-October, although the ruling has only just been made known.

The Italian press says the archbishop "illegally and illegitimately" took the money from his brother over many years.

Evidently, the siblings inherited a sizable fortune from their father, a steel industrialist in Milan, who died in 1961.

They decided to keep their part of the inheritance "in common" and agreed that Carlo Maria would manage it.

In 2011 Lorenzo told an Italian daily he had "trusted him [his brother] blindly," until his brother's actions seeking to take total control of his part of the finances caused him to resort to legal action and demand the division of their inheritance.

The court in Milan found that, by September 2010, the brothers' inheritance included several units of real estate valued at around US$23 million, plus a sum of money of around US$7 million.

Much of the money was held in a bank in Switzerland. The court concluded that the archbishop had benefited from the real estate, keeping about US$4 million he should have shared with his brother.

This is the second time the archbishop has made headlines around the world. In August his accusations that Pope Francis covered up the abuse of the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and calls for Francis to resign provoked an international media frenzy.

Source

• La Stampa
• America Magazine
• Image: Crux Now

Francis is asking all Catholics for their help in driving Satan away.

"The Church must be saved from the attacks of the malign one, the great accuser, and at the same time be made ever more aware of its guilt, its mistakes, and abuses committed in the present and the past."

During the past year, one abuse scandal after another has hit world headlines.

To name a few, these include:

• revelations of over 300 clergy being accused of sex abuse in Pennsylvania
• the ongoing McCarrick-Vigano accusations
• the Australian Royal Commission that reported numerous instances of abuse by clergy and religious, and the Chilean abuse scandal involving Bishop Juan Barros
• arrests, trials and convictions of clergy of all ranks, often featuring senior clergy.

Francis also believes the devil is behind the divisions in the Church at present.

Media reports suggest his choice of words in calling the devil "the great accuser" is also a reference to one of his harshest conservative critics, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was the Vatican's former ambassador to Washington.

Last month Viganò accused Francis of knowing about sexual misconduct by a former US cardinal with male adult seminarians but not doing anything about it.

According to the Daily Mail, Viganò has complained Francis compared him "to the great accuser, Satan, who sows scandal and division in the Church, though without ever uttering my name."

Francis is calling on all Catholics to pray the rosary each day this month and to conclude it with the prayer to St Michael the Archangel.

Michael is mentioned several times in the Bible as the leader of the angels who ousted Lucifer, the fallen angel, from paradise.

Source

• Daily Mail
• Express
• Image: syrianfreepress.wordpress.com

Noting Viganò had urged him to tell the truth about Archbishop Emeritus Theodore McCarrick, Ouellet - with Pope Francis's permission - offered Viganò his "personal testimony, as the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops."

Ouellet says his response is based partly on his personal knowledge "regarding the events concerning McCarrick and his presumed links with Pope Francis" and partly on documents in the Congregation for Bishops' archive.

The events Ouellet refers to constitute the subject of what he calls Viganò's "sensational public denunciation, as well as [his] demand that the Holy Father resign."

Addressing his letter to "Dear fellow brother, Carlo Maria Viganò," Ouellet went on to denounce the former nuncio's accusations against Francis, charging him with "blasphemy" for calling into question the pope's faith and asking him to repent.

"Your present position appears to me incomprehensible and extremely reprehensible, not only because of the confusion that it sows in the People of God, but also because of the accusations that seriously damage the good name of the Successors of the Apostles," Ouellet told Viganò.

Ouellet provided Viganò with numerous reasons for disbelieving his testimony against Francis. These include:

• lack of written evidence
• that he "strongly" doubted McCarrick was of interest to Francis in 2011 "to the point [Viganò] believed him to be, since ... he was an 82-year-old Archbishop Emeritus who had been without an appointment for seven years"
• the written brief the Congregation of Bishops prepared for Viganò at the beginning of his service in 2011 said only one thing about McCarrick

The written brief focused on McCarrick's situation as an emeritus Bishop: he was supposed to obey certain conditions and restrictions due to rumours surrounding his past behaviour.

Source

• America Magazine
• Vatican News
• Image: CBC.ca

This one condemns the Vatican for not responding to his first letter of 22 August.

In that, he claimed Pope Francis and other senior Church leaders covered up allegations of McCarrick's abusive behaviour, and that Francis not only ignored sanctions Pope Benedict allegedly imposed on McCarrick but made him a close advisor.

Viganò's current letter says he wrote his first letter "solely for the good of the Church."

He says he chose to disclose the Church leaders' cover-up "after long reflection and prayer, during months of profound suffering and anguish, during a crescendo of continual news of terrible events …

"The silence of the pastors who could have provided a remedy and prevented new victims became increasingly indefensible, a devastating crime for the Church.

"How can one avoid concluding that the reason they do not provide the documentation is that they know it confirms my testimony?" he wrote.

"Neither the pope nor any of the cardinals in Rome have denied the facts I asserted in my testimony. If they deny my testimony, they have only to say so, and provide documentation to support that denial."

Francis has responded to Viganò's claims, saying to reporters, "I will not say a single word." Instead, he challenged reporters to figure out the truth for themselves.

Source

• Crux Now
• National Review
• Image: Catholic Herald

Francis says an 11-page document of claims released by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò "speaks for itself".

Asked about the letter from in a press conference aboard the Aug. 26 flight back to Rome after his visit to Ireland, Francis advised journalists to "read the statement attentively and make your own judgment."

"I will not say a single word on this," the pope said of the letter.

"I think this statement speaks for itself, and you have the sufficient journalistic capacity to draw conclusions."

"When some time passes and you have your conclusions, maybe I will speak," said Francis. "But I would like that your professional maturity carries out this task."

Three Popes knew about McCarrick

In the letter Viganò released to the National Catholic Register and LifeSiteNews, he claimed that since 2000, three popes, as well as former and current senior Church officials have been covering-up allegations about former cardinal Theodore McCarrick sexually abusing seminarians.

On Sunday Viganò told The Washington Post he wouldn't comment further, beyond confirming that he was the letter's author.

The accusations in the letter are unsubstantiated, but a number of people are named who are said to have known about the situation.

This is not the first time Viganò has been the immersed in controversy.

Implicated in Vatileaks

Before becoming Ambassador to the United States Viganò, was the Secretary-General of the Vatican City Governatorate.

In 2010 he was implicated in the so-called Vatileaks scandal.

Some of Viganò's letters were leaked. In them, he warned of corruption, abuse of power, a lack of transparency in awarding contracts and opposition to financial reforms.

He was subsequently removed from office and appointed to Washington in 2011.

In February 2012 the current and immediate past presidents of the Governorate of Vatican City State released a statement about the leaked letters.

They said the letters contained assertions based on "erroneous evaluations" or "fears unsupported by proof".

Arranged a controversial meeting in the USA

When the Pope was visiting the United States Viganò arranged a meeting between the pope and a Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis.

She had gained notoriety by turning away gay couples seeking marriage.

Davis' attorney said that she received a phone call from Viganò insisting on a meeting with the pope.

"We were led to believe that the invitation did come directly from Pope Francis," the attorney said at the time.

The Vatican later accused Viganò of keeping the pope in the dark about the surprise encounter.

Cover-ups

According to Crux Now, Viganò was accused of his own mishandling of sex abuse allegations; encouraging Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piche to destroy documents relating to the investigation of Archbishop John Nienstedt.

Source

• Crux Now
• National Catholic Register
• Get Religion
• Reuters
• salon.com
• The Washington Post
• National Catholic Reporter
• ncronline.org
• ncronline.org
• Image: LifeSite News