ROME — The Vatican has summoned Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former papal nuncio to the United States, to undergo an extrajudicial penal trial for the crime of schism and having denied the legitimacy of Pope Francis and the Second Vatican Council.
Archbishop Viganò has been a thorn in the side of Pope Francis ever since 2018, when he published an explosive report accusing the pontiff of reinstating homosexual abuser Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to a position of prominence despite knowing of McCarrick’s serial abuse.
In his 11-page affidavit, Archbishop Viganò asserted that Pope Benedict had imposed “canonical sanctions” on Cardinal McCarrick in 2009-2010 forbidding him from traveling, celebrating Mass in public, or participating in public meetings, but that Pope Francis later lifted these sanctions and made McCarrick a close personal advisor.
“Francis is abdicating the mandate which Christ gave to Peter to confirm the brethren. Indeed, by his action he has divided them, led them into error, and encouraged the wolves to continue to tear apart the sheep of Christ’s flock,” Viganò stated, before calling on the pope to resign.
“In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them,” the archbishop said.
Now the Vatican’s doctrinal office, headed by Argentinean Cardinal Víctor “Tucho” Fernández, has ordered the former Vatican diplomat to appear in Rome to answer the charges on June 20, either in person or via a legal representative.
File/ Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S., listens to remarks at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ annual fall meeting in Baltimore, Nov. 16, 2015. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
“I have been summoned to the Palace of the Holy Office on June 20, in person or represented by a canon lawyer. I assume that the sentence has already been prepared, given that it is an extrajudicial process,” Archbishop Viganò said in a statement on X (former Twitter).
Viganò said that he regards the accusations against him as “an honor.”
“I believe that the very wording of the charges confirms the theses that I have repeatedly defended in my various addresses,” he wrote.
In the full text of his announcement, Viganò said he could not sit by and watch “the systematic destruction of the Church by its leaders” by imposing a globalist agenda including “uncontrolled immigration,” “the integration of cultures and religions,” “LGBTQ+ ideology,” and a “green agenda.”
“He goes beyond his role in matters that strictly pertain to science, but always and only in one direction: a direction that is diametrically opposed to what the Church has always taught,” he added.
Francis’ “total alignment with the Davos religion is scandalous,” he wrote, leaving many Catholics to feel “abandoned by the Vatican and the Bishops.”
“In the ‘synodal church’ presided over by Bergoglio, no schism is recognized among the German Episcopate, or among the government-appointed Bishops who have been consecrated in China without the mandate of Rome,” he stated.
“The Catholic Church has been slowly but surely taken over, and Bergoglio has been given the task of making it a philanthropic agency, the ‘church of humanity, of inclusion, of the environment’ at the service of the New World Order,” he wrote.
“But this is not the Catholic Church: it is her counterfeit,” he declared.
According to one observer, author and Catholic convert Dr. Taylor Marshall, the trial and probable excommunication of Archbishop Viganò “will go badly for Francis” because he will “win the battle but take a mortal wound” in the process.
“This will look the world as Pope Francis disciplining the whistle blower of American sex scandals. This will become very ugly,” he said.
