A firebrand conservative who became one among Pope Francis’ most ardent critics has been excommunicated by the Vatican.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who once served because the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S., was found guilty of schism. The Vatican’s doctrine office imposed the penalty after a gathering of its members on Thursday, a press statement said Friday.
The office cited Viganò’s “refusal to acknowledge and undergo 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,” as its reasoning for the ruling.
Patrick Semansky/AP
The Vatican excommunication implies that Viganò is formally outside the church, and can’t have a good time or receive its sacraments, for having committed one among the gravest crimes in canon law: schism. A schism occurs when someone withdraws submission to the pope or from the communion of Catholics who’re subject to him.
It is taken into account particularly dangerous to the religion since it threatens the unity of the church. And actually, Vigano had created a following of like-minded conservatives and traditionalists over time as he delved deeper and deeper into conspiracy theories about the whole lot from the coronavirus pandemic, to what he called the “Great Reset” and other fringe ideas.
Viganò, during his time as envoy in Washington, also made headlines during Francis’ 2015 visit to the United States, which as nuncio he helped organize. Everything was going high-quality until Viganò arranged for Kim Davis, a Kentucky clerk at the middle of the U.S. gay marriage debate, to be amongst a small group of individuals on the Vatican residence to greet Francis.
Davis had risen to prominence for refusing to issue all marriage licenses fairly than be compelled to issue licenses to same-sex couples. She became a hero to the conservative right within the U.S., with whom Vigano had increasingly identified during U.S. culture wars over gay marriage and non secular 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 folks that included a gay couple.
Vigano’s deception in inviting Davis to satisfy the pope appeared to place the 2 on what would change into a collision course that exploded in August 2018.
Viganò, who retired in 2016 at age 75, convulsed the Holy See with accusations of sex abuse in 2018, calling on Francis to resign.
As Francis was wrapping up a tense visit to Ireland, Viganò claimed in an 11-page letter that in 2013 he told the pontiff of the allegations of sex abuse against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, essentially the most senior U.S. churchmen. But, he wrote, the pontiff ignored that, and allowed McCarrick to proceed to serve the church for an additional five years publicly. He said the pope should resign and subsequently branded him a “false prophet” and a “servant of Satan.”
In the letter, Viganò also made quite a few ideological claims and was critical of homosexuals inside Church ranks. He didn’t offer any proof for his statements.
The accusations were explosive and helped create the best crisis of Francis’ then-young pontificate.
The Vatican rejected the accusation of a cover-up of sexual misconduct and last month summoned Viganò to reply charges of schism and denying the pope’s legitimacy.
Viganò, who regarded the accusations “as an honor,” said he refused to participate within the disciplinary proceedings because he didn’t accept the legitimacy of the institutions behind it.
“I don’t recognize the authority of the tribunal that claims to evaluate me, nor of its Prefect, nor of the one who appointed him,” he said in a press release issued last week, referring to the top of the doctrinal office, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, and to Francis.
Viganò restated his rejection of Vatican Council II, calling it “the ideological, theological, moral and liturgical cancer of which the (Francis’) ‘synod church’ is the needed metastasis.”
He had not yet commented on the Vatican’s ruling on X, his usual forum. About an hour before the Vatican decree was made public, he announced he can be celebrating a Mass on Friday for individuals who have been supporting him and asked for donations.
McCarrick, the ex-archbishop of Washington, D.C., was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after an internal Vatican investigation found he sexually molested adults in addition to children.
