ROME – A former Vatican envoy to the United States who has publicly called for Pope Francis’s resignation and who was excommunicated earlier this summer has said his life is in danger and voiced belief that the sanction against him is invalid.
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.
According to Viganò, Sambi had “strenuously faced” the disgraced ex-priest and ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and an influential prelate in both the U.S. and the Vatican who was laicized in 2019 following allegations of the sexual abuse of minors and the sexual harassment of adult seminarians.
“Sambi died in circumstances that have never been clarified, after a banal operation. The death certificate issued to the nunciature did not explain the causes of Sambi’s death, on whom an autopsy was never performed,” Viganò said.
Viganò, who served as nuncio to the United States from 2011-2016 and who in 2018 publicly accused Pope Francis covering up McCarrick’s abuse and called for the pope’s resignation, was formally declared to be excommunicated by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) on July 4.
The reasons for the excommunication, according to the Vatican decree, were Viganò’s repeated public “statements manifesting his 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.”
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Having previously called the allegations against him “an honor,” Viganò in his conversation with Il Messaggero defended his actions and public statements, saying that the allegation that he committed schism is false.
“Schism is a sin against the unity of the church. It occurs when a baptized person refuses to submit to the authority of the Roman Pontiff and to remain in the communion of faith and charity of the Catholic Church. But what happens if in the place of the pope who defends and governs the church there is someone who systematically demolishes it?” he said.
Similarly, Viganò said rejecting the Second Vatican Council “has nothing to do with schism,” because the council deals with topics related to the Magisterium, the church’s body of teachings, rather than canonical discipline.
“The accusation is specious: There are cardinals and bishops who deny solemnly defined truths of faith, without Bergoglio lifting a finger, indeed with his applause,” he said.
Viganò charged that the Second Vatican Council was used “for a subversive purpose,” and that it was called in order to “create the doctrinal premises… to revolutionize the church, protestantizing and secularizing it, so as to be able to ferry it towards the syncretistic union of all religions.”
“This is the project of Freemasonry: The Religion of ecumenical and inclusive humanity. The Second Vatican Council has spread in the church like a cancer,” he said, saying all church institutions and texts, including the Code of Canon Law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, have been “tampered with and remodeled.”
Asked about rumors that he intends to create a “parallel church” similar to the schismatic Society of Saint Pius X established by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre after his own excommunication in 1988, Viganò denied the rumors and said that was never Lefebvre’s intention, either.
Lefebvre, he said, “always testified to his fidelity to the one Church of Christ and to the papacy,” and even after his excommunication, he “continued to do what he did as bishop until before the council…He continued to ordain priests, give them a traditional formation, to ensure the celebration of the Apostolic Mass.”
“Today, 50 years later, the subversive plan denounced by Lefebvre is even more evident and the answers that were valid then today require a new approach,” he said.
Viganò said there had been almost no attempts to resolve the disagreements between him and the Vatican over the years, and that he never received any private communication from Vatican authorities.
He maintained his position that Pope Francis covered up McCarrick’s abuses, saying he dealt with the McCarrick case while still serving as Delegate for Pontifical Representations in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, and his direct superiors failed to properly consider “my judgement based on incontrovertible testimonies.”
“Obviously, McCarrick’s actions were convenient for someone in the Secretariat of State: I am thinking of the huge sums raised through the Papal Foundation that McCarrick established in the United States,” he said, referring to an American charitable organization dedicated exclusively to funding papal projects.
Viganò said he had attempted to sound the alarm over McCarrick to Sambi, but “the prospects of a career advancement induced him to remain silent and cover up the scandals.”
He alleged that McCarrick’s laicization in 2019 was only authorized by Francis in order to save face and was meant “to hide the network of complicity despite the crimes having been known for decades.”
Referring to past tensions between him and former Vatican Secretary of State Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Viganò said he believed Bertone to be corrupt and had sought to block many of his candidates for episcopal appointments.
“He thus managed to transfer me to the Governorate in 2009, where I discovered the role and complicity in covering up the corruption,” he said, and also criticized Pope Francis for taking away his curial apartment after his retirement in 2016.
Francis had made the decision on grounds that the apartment was needed, “but from what I know it remained empty,” he said, calling it “a vindictive action, Bergoglio wanted to get rid of someone who knew too much and was not maneuverable.”
“With the excommunication that is clearly invalid, they wanted to somehow condemn me to death, but the truth cannot be killed,” he said.
Viganò, when asked about his repeated condemnations of the so-called “globalist elite” in his publications, said he insists so much on this topic because “we are going through a period of very serious crisis in the Church and in society.”
“The authorities of all institutions are today an expression of this elite and obey supranational powers. We are witnessing a deep and almost unbridgeable rift between those who govern – the State as well as the Church – and the citizens and faithful,” he said.
“In practice, the rulers of the State have rebelled against Christ the King and the exponents of the Catholic hierarchy have rebelled against Christ the pontiff: their authority is usurped,” he said, calling for a greater unity to the figure of Christ in the papacy.
Asked about a civil case he lost against his brother related to an inheritance dispute, Viganò said he was portrayed as “a crook and a thief.”
After losing his case and being ordered to compensate his brother, Viganò said he refused to take further action because “I did not want to be cruel by challenging an unjust sentence, preferring to follow the evangelical command (to whoever wants to sue you, to take away your tunic, you must also leave your cloak).”
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