(begin) The Vatican has excommunicated its former ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, after finding him guilty of schism, an inevitable end for the firebrand conservative who became one of Pope Francis ' most ardent critics and a symbol of the polarized Catholic Church in the U.S. and beyond.
The Vatican’s doctrine office imposed the penalty after a meeting of its members on Thursday and informed Vigano of its decision Friday, a press statement said. It cited Vigano’s “refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with the members of the church subject to him, and of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council.”
The Vatican excommunication means that Vigano is formally outside the church, and cannot celebrate or receive its sacraments, for having committed one of the gravest crimes in canon law: schism. A schism occurs when someone withdraws submission to the pope or from the communion of Catholics who are subject to him.
It is considered particularly dangerous to the faith because it threatens the unity of the church, which is built on obedience to the pope. And Vigano had created a following of like-minded conservatives and traditionalists over the years as he delved deeper and deeper into conspiracy theories about everything from the coronavirus pandemic, to what he called the “Great Reset” and other fringe ideas.
His dire pronunciations about the current state of the Catholic Church, amplified on Catholic social media sites and by ideologically friendly bloggers on both sides of the Atlantic, were an exaggerated version of the chasm between U.S. ultra-conservatives and Francis. While the Italian prelate enjoyed mainstream support among conservative bishops early in his public career, many distanced themselves as his ideas became more and more extreme.
Vigano, who hasn’t been seen publicly since before 2018, knew the schism declaration was coming after the Vatican informed him that it was launching a penal process against him last month. He defiantly called it “an honor” and refused to appear in person or in writing to defend himself.
Vigano issued a lengthy public statement last month justifying his conduct and refusing to recognize the authority of the Vatican’s doctrinal office “that claims to judge me, nor of its prefect, nor of the one who appointed him.” But he didn’t directly respond to the schism declaration Friday on X, his usual forum. About an hour before the Vatican decree was made public, he announced he would be celebrating a Mass on Friday for those who have been supporting him and asked for donations.
Vigano first burst into the public’s awareness in 2012, during the first Vatileaks scandal, when Pope Benedict XVI’s butler leaked the pontiff’s private papers to an Italian journalist to try to draw attention to corruption in the Holy See. In some of the leaked letters Vigano, then the No. 2 in the Vatican City State administration, begged the pope not to be transferred after exposing corruption in the awarding of Vatican contracts that cost the Holy See millions of euros (dollars).
The entreaties didn’t work: By the time the letters were published, Benedict had transferred Vigano to be the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States, certainly a prestigious post but one that took him far from Rome and out of the running to one day be a cardinal.
Vigano reappeared on the scene during Francis’ 2015 visit to the United States, which as nuncio Vigano helped organize. Everything was going fine until Vigano arranged for Kim Davis, a Kentucky clerk at the center of the U.S. gay marriage debate, to be among a small group of people at the Vatican residence to greet Francis.
Davis had risen to prominence for refusing to issue all marriage licenses rather than be compelled to issue licenses to same-sex couples. She became a hero to the conservative right in the U.S., with whom Vigano had increasingly identified during U.S. culture wars over gay marriage and religious liberty issues. After the visit ended, Davis and her lawyers claimed the encounter with Francis amounted to an affirmation of her cause. The Vatican later turned that claim on its head when it released footage of what it said was the “only” private audience Francis had in Washington: with a small group of people that included a gay couple.
Vigano’s deception in inviting Davis to meet the pope, who had wanted to steer clear of the U.S. culture wars during his visit, appeared to put the two on what would become a collision course that exploded in August 2018. At the time, the U.S. church was reeling from a new chapter in its clergy sex abuse scandal: One of the most senior U.S. churchmen, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, had been accused of molesting a minor and a Pennsylvania grand jury had issued a devastating investigation into decades of abuse and cover-up.
As Francis was wrapping up a tense visit to Ireland, Vigano published an 11-page screed accusing him and decades of U.S. and Vatican officials of covering for McCarrick. Specifically, Vigano accused Francis of rehabilitating McCarrick from sanctions imposed by Benedict and called on him to resign. The accusations were explosive and helped create the greatest crisis of Francis’ then-young pontificate.
Francis quickly authorized an in-house investigation to determine who knew what and when about McCarrick’s penchant for sleeping with his seminarians. The report, released in 2020, confirmed that a generation of church officials, including Pope John Paul II, had turned a blind eye to McCarrick’s misconduct. It largely spared Francis who eventually defrocked the churchman.
But the report also faulted Vigano for not looking into new claims against McCarrick or enforcing Vatican restrictions on him when specifically ordered to do so by the Vatican. At that point, Vigano’s claims against Francis began to become more unhinged. He endorsed conspiracy theories about the coronavirus vaccines, appeared at far-right political rallies in the U.S., backed Russia in its war and, eventually, refused to recognize Francis as pope. (end)
What follows is an example of the dissent Vigano has instigated against Pope Francis and the Vatican.
(begin) Archbishop Viganò pushes conspiracy theories about Ukraine and Russia in 10,000-word letter by Claire Giangravé - Religion News Service March 07, 2022
VATICAN CITY (RNS) — As Pope Francis continued attempts to mediate the conflict in Ukraine, former Vatican envoy and outspoken papal critic Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò released a letter Monday (March 7) blaming “deep state” forces in the United States, the European Union and NATO for triggering the current war and demonizing Russia. “The United States of America and the European States must not marginalize Russia but build an alliance with it, not only to restart trade for the prosperity of all, but in lieu of the reconstruction of a Christian Civilization, which will be the only one able to save the world from the transhuman and medical-technical globalist monster,” the archbishop wrote in his nearly 10,000 word letter.
The archbishop, once the papal nuncio to the United States among other countries, has a keen understanding of what happens in rooms of power and influence, but since accusing Francis of covering up allegations of sex abuse against disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, going so far as to ask for the pope’s resignation in 2018, Viganò has been welcomed into the ranks of a small but outspoken Catholic conservative right. His rhetoric has increasingly leaned on anti-migrant, anti-vaccine and pro-Trump takes (my emphasis).
The archbishop said in his letter that Putin has been cornered by an aggressive NATO, backed by the United States, which is seeking to escalate the conflict for its own gains. “This is the trap for Russia just as much as Ukraine, using both to allow a globalist elite to bring its criminal plot to fruition,” Viganò wrote.
So-called democratic states, according to Viganò, have imposed “censure and intolerance” over dissenting opinions. The pandemic has exacerbated this dynamic, the archbishop said, adding that global media outlets “shamelessly lied” with the cooperation of governments and the Catholic hierarchy. Viganò said the “ostracism” of those who have opposed the administration of COVID-19 vaccines was similar to the treatment reserved for those who refuse to call Putin an “invader” or “tyrant” (my emphasis).
The Vatican has repeatedly dismissed objections to the vaccines based on their development or testing with stem cell lines original drawn from aborted fetal cells. Pope Francis has joined global pro-vaccine campaigns, calling getting the shot “an act of love.” The Pontifical Academy for Life, a Vatican think tank charged with promoting life from conception to natural death, has come forward numerous times encouraging Catholics to get the vaccine.
Viganò adopted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for attacking Ukraine, lamenting the lack of media coverage of supposed neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine that have allegedly attacked Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the autonomous eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ridiculed the idea that Nazism is behind the eight-year-old conflict in his country’s east, which Russia invaded in 2014.
The letter was the second defense of Russia’s invasion to be floated by a prominent churchman in recent days. In a sermon on Sunday, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and an ally of Putin, repeated a long-held contention that the West wants to enforce the practice of holding gay pride parades as a test of loyalty to its values, which include the acceptance of homosexuality. The Ukraine war, he said Sunday, resulted from the eastern regions’ refusal to acquiesce. “If humanity accepts that sin is not a violation of God’s law, if humanity accepts that sin is a variation of human behavior, then human civilization will end there,” Kirill said on the pre-Lenten celebration known as Forgiveness Sunday.
But Viganò sees a deeper plot to institute a new world order. Naming the United Nations, NATO and the International Monetary Fund as well as the European Union and billionaire philanthropists like George Soros and Bill Gates, the archbishop identified a global conspiracy, initiated by an American deep state, to introduce a world government based on economic interests and progressivism (my emphasis).
Viganò portrayed Zelenskyy as an E.U. puppet, an affable outsider introduced to foment Ukrainians’ feelings against Russia. “The image of Zelenskyy is an artificial product, a mediatic fiction, an operation to manipulate consensus that was nonetheless able to create a political character in the Ukrainian collective imagination and who in reality, not in fiction, was able to seize power,” the former Vatican envoy wrote of the Ukrainian president, who is Jewish.
Calling Ukrainians “hostages” of the globalist totalitarian regime, he advised them against joining the E.U. Instead, Viganò wrote, European nations must seek their independence by finding once more their “sovereignty, their identity, their faith. Their soul.” Nonetheless, the archbishop urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to “turn the tables” on the “globalist ploy” by offering Ukraine a peaceful way out. “The more Putin believes (himself) to be right, the more he will prove the greatness of his nation and the love for his people by not giving into provocations,” he added. (end)
Vagano reaped what he sowed.
Deacon David Pierce
Comments
Post a Comment
Please THINK before you write!