On July 4th, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith concluded a canonical process against Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who, during his five-decade career in the Roman Catholic Church, had served in many offices, including as the Vatican’s ambassador (“Nuncio”) to the United States.
The Dicastery found Viganò guilty of the canonical crime of schism, refusing to submit to the pope, and declared that he had incurred the penalty of excommunication latae sententiae, meaning that the sentence is retro-active to the time the canonical crime was committed. Vigano is known for his conservative positions, such as favoring the Latin Mass and disfavoring Vatican II, and has called Pope Francis “a servant of Satan.”
Life Sketch
Carlo Maria Viganò was born in 1941 in Varese, Italy. He holds doctorates in canon law and civil law, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1968. He had a long career working for the Vatican Diplomatic Corps. From 2009 to 2011, Viganò held the position of Secretary General of the Governorate of the Vatican City State. In 2011, he was appointed as the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States. He retired on April 12, 2016.
The Vatican Leaks Scandal
The archbishop is known for having publicized the Vatican leaks scandal of 2012, in which he revealed financial corruption. The scandal involved the blackmailing of homosexual clergy, as well as financial chicanery in which the Holy See paid inflated contracts. The leaked documents revealed power struggles inside the Vatican surrounding efforts to implement greater financial transparency and comply with international norms against money laundering.
The McCarrick Scandal
On August 25, 2018, Viganò published an 11-page letter accusing Pope Francis and numerous other senior church leaders of concealing the sexual misconduct of an American Cardinal, Theodore McCarrick. Viganò revealed that Pope Benedict XVI had imposed sanctions on McCarrick, but Pope Francis refused to enforce them, instead making McCarrick an important advisor. Viganò called on Francis to resign.
Viganò said of McCarrick, “The cardinal, muttering in a barely comprehensible way, admitted that he had perhaps made the mistake of sleeping in the same bed with some seminarians at his beach house, but he said this as if it had no importance,” Viganò recalled in his testimony.
Regarding Cardinal Rodriguez Maradíaga of Honduras, Vigano stated that Pope Francis “defends his man to the bitter end,” just as with McCarrick.
“He [Pope Francis] knew from at least June 23, 2013, that McCarrick was a serial predator, Viganò stated, but although “he knew that he was a corrupt man, he covered for him to the bitter end.” “It was only when he was forced by the report of the abuse of a minor, again on the basis of media attention, that he took action to save his image in the media.”
Vigano stated that his main motivation for writing his testimony now was to “stop the suffering of the victims, to prevent new victims and to protect the Church: only the truth can make her free,” and to “discharge my conscience in front of God of my responsibilities as bishop for the universal Church.”
“The people of God have the right to know the full truth also regarding their shepherds,” he said. “They have the right to be guided by good shepherds. In order to be able to trust them and love them, they have to know them openly, in transparency and truth, as they really are.”
The LGBTQ Issue
Viganò was critical of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision mandating same-sex marriage in all 50 states. In his capacity as papal nuncio to the U.S., he secured Kim Davis an audience with the pope. (Davis was a Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the 2015 decision.) Davis claimed she had been granted a “private audience,” but the Vatican denied that claim.
More recently, Viganò criticized Francis’ decision to let same-sex couples be blessed in church, if the ceremonies are not actual weddings and are not part of a worship service or mass. “Bergoglio authorizes the blessing of same-sex couples and imposes on the faithful the acceptance of homosexualism, while covering up the [sexual] scandals of his protégés and promoting them to the highest positions of responsibility,” Viganò wrote in a document submitted to the dicastery.
Conservative Views
Viganò wrote an admiring letter to Donald Trump in 2020, saying, “For the first time, the United States has in you a President who courageously defends the right to life, who is not ashamed to denounce the persecution of Christians throughout the world, who speaks of Jesus Christ and the right of citizens to freedom of worship.”
In the letter, he also condemned the George Floyd protests and the school and business closures related to COVID-19. Viganò stated that just as there is a “deep state” in the U.S. executive branch that persecutes Trump and other conservatives, there is “a deep church that betrays its duties and forswears its proper commitments before God.”
Viganò also recently retweeted a tweet by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that the COVID-19 vaccines “are killing people.”
The Case Against Vigano
Pope Francis has tolerated some dissent within the church, but has acted ruthlessly against his most pointed critics. In March 2022, Francis removed a bishop for protesting the vaccine mandate. In November of last year, he removed Bishop Joseph Strickland as head of the diocese of Tyler, Texas. Strickland had accused Francis of undermining the faith through his liberalization of the Roman Church, including welcoming the openly LGBTQ.
There is no doubt that Viganò is guilty of denying the pope’s authority. In his writings, he repeatedly refers to Pope Francis as “Bergoglio,” (the pope’s birth name is Jorge Mario Bergoglio). Viganò also rejects the authority of the Second Vatican Council, stating that “Bergoglio’s church is not the Catholic Church, but that ‘conciliar church born of the Second Vatican Council. . . . If it is from this ‘church’ that I am declared separate by schism, I make it my reason for honor and boasting.” Vigano hopes that one day a pope “will heal this situation by declaring [Vatican II] illegitimate, invalid, null and void.”
Vigano’s Statement in Response to Excommunication
Clearly, Vigano no longer sees Pope Francis as a legitimate heir to “the throne of Peter,” arguing that Bergoglio is a usurper who has effectively founded his own sect. He posted this comment:
“The Bergoglian sect proceeds in forced stages towards the definitive deconstruction of the Catholic Priesthood, making it superfluous in practice, even though it does not deny it in theory, flanking it with non-ordained ministries that can also be conferred on women, and allowing lay people to preach (a prerogative strictly reserved to ordained ministers even according to Montinian and post-conciliar norms).
“He wants churches to empty out completely and that the Holy Sacrifice will no longer be celebrated there: those Novus Ordo [“new order’] churches are already deserted because of the horrid liturgies, while those full of the faithful - where the Apostolic Mass is celebrated as it has always been done [in Latin] - will be closed by ecclesiastical authority. This is the Protestantization of the Church taken to its extreme consequences.
“Bergoglio wants to silence every voice of dissent, pushing true Catholics to abandon the Church, whose authority and name he usurps. He promotes heresy and schism with increasingly unprecedented provocations, because he does not tolerate confrontations in which he would be hopelessly defeated. He is an out-of-control tyrant, surrounded by accomplices and cowards.