GIÁO HỘI HIỆN THẾ

 

2018

 

 

Holy Father’s In-Flight Press Conference on Return from Ireland (Full Text)

‘The Irish people have a faith that is rooted and strong’

AUGUST 28, 2018 15:33PILGRIMAGES

Following is the Vatican-provided transcript of the in-flight press conference Pope Francis held on his flight from Ireland to Rome, at the end of his Aug. 25-26, 2018, trip for the Ninth World Meeting of Families:

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Yesterday, during the return flight from Dublin to Rome, at the end of his apostolic trip to Ireland for the Ninth World Meeting of Families, the Holy Father Francis met with journalists on board the aircraft in a press conference, the full text of which follows:

Greg Burke:
Good evening, Holy Father!

Pope Francis:
Good evening!

Greg Burke:
Holy Father, thank you for this time you are dedicating to us after two such intense days. Certainly, there were difficult moments in Ireland – there is always the matter of abuse – but also very beautiful moments: the Festival of Families, testimonies from families, the meeting with the young couples and the visit to the Capuchins, who greatly help the poor.

Let us hand over to the journalists, starting with the Irish… But maybe you want to say something first…

Pope Francis:
To say thank you, because while I am tired, I think of you who have work, work, work… I thank you so much for your effort and your work. Many thanks.

Greg Burke:
The first question, as usual, comes from a journalist from the country, who is Tony Connelly of RTÉ – Radio TV Ireland).

Tony Connelly, RTÉ (Radio Tv Irlanda)
Your Holiness, you spoke on Saturday about the meeting you had with the Minister for Childhood. You talked about how moved you were by what she said about the mother and baby homes. What exactly did she tell you? Were you shocked because it was the first time you had heard of these homes?

Pope Francis:
The minister first told me something that did not have too much to do with mothers and children. She told me, and she was brief: “Holy Father, we found mass graves of children, buried children, we are investigating… Does the Church have something to do with all this?” But she said it very politely and truly with a lot of respect. I thanked her, as this had touched my heart to the point that I wanted to repeat it in the speech. It is was not at the airport, I was mistaken, it was at the meeting with the President. At the airport, there was another lady, a minister I think, and I made the mistake. But, she told me, “I’ll send you a memo”. She sent me a memo and I haven’t been able to read it yet. I saw it was a memo, that she sent me a memo. She was very balanced in telling me, “There’s an issue, the investigation has not yet finished”. But, she made me understand that the Church has something to do with this. For me, this was an example of constructive collaboration, rather than, I don’t want to say the word “protest” … of complaint, of complaint for that which at one time maybe the Church had favoured. That lady had a dignity that touched my heart, and now I have that memo, which I will study when I get home. Thanks to her.

Greg Burke:
Now, another Irishman, Paddy Agnew, of the “Sunday Independent”, resident in Rome but an Irish journalist.

Pope Francis:
He is not the only Irishman in Rome!

Paddy Agnew, “Sunday Independent”:
Holy Father, thank you and good evening. Yesterday, Marie Collins, the abuse victim Marie Collins whom you know well, said that you are not favourable to a new tribunal for Vatican inquiries on the issue of abuses, new inquiries on the problem of sexual abuse, and in particular on a so-called tribunal of inquiry on the assumption of responsibility by bishops – bishop accountability. Why do you think this is not necessary?

Pope Francis:
No, no, it is not like this. Marie Collins is rather focused on the idea… I greatly respect Marie Collins. At times, we call her to the Vatican to give conferences. She is very interested in the idea of the text on “As a loving mother” (Apostolic Letter issued Motu proprio) in which it is said that it would be good to have a special tribunal to judge bishops. Then, we saw this was not practical, nor was it convenient for the different cultures of the bishops that had to be judged. You can take the recommendation of “As a loving mother” and make the “giuria” [commission of bishops] for each bishop, but it is not the same. This bishop is judged and the Pope makes a “giuria” that is more able to take on that case. It is something that works better, also because not all bishops are able to leave their dioceses. It is not possible. In this way, the tribunals, the “giuria” change. And that is what we have done so far. Quite a lot of bishops have been judged. The latest is that of Guam, the Archbishop of Guam, who appealed. And, I decided – because it is a very difficult case – to use a right I have of taking on the appeal myself and not sending it to the council of appeal that does its work with all the priests, but I took it upon myself. And made a commission of canonists who are helping me and who have told me that when I get back, after a maximum of a month, a recommendation will be made so I can make a judgment. It is a complicated case, on one hand, but not difficult because the evidence is clear. I cannot pre-judge, I await the report and then I will judge. I say that the evidence is clear because there is this evidence which led the first tribunal to the sentence. This is the most recent case. Now, there is another in process and we will see how it ends. But, of course, I told Marie that the spirit and also the recommendation of “As a loving mother” is being implemented… a bishop is judged by a tribunal, but it is not always the same tribunal, as it is not possible. She did not understand that well. But, when I see her, sometimes she comes to the Vatican, I will explain it more clearly. I wish her well.

Greg Burke:
Now the Italian group, Holy Father: there is Stefania Falasca, of “Avvenire”.

Stefania Falasca, “Avvenire”:
Good evening, Holy Father. You have said, even today, that it is always a challenge to welcome the migrant and the foreigner. Just yesterday a painful matter was resolved, that of the ship “Diciotti”. Is your “hoof” behind this solution? Is there your involvement, your interest?

Pope Francis:
It is the devil who has a hoof, not me! [Laughter] The hoof is the devil’s…

Stefania Falasca:
And then, many see extortion of Europe on the backs of these people. What do you think?

Pope Francis:
The welcoming of migrants is as old as the Bible. It is in Deuteronomy, in the Commandments. God commands welcoming the migrant, the foreigner. It is so old that it is in the spirit of revelation but also in the spirit of Christianity. It is a moral principle. I spoke about this. Then, I saw that I needed to bit a bit more explicit because it is not a reception with the “belle étoile,” no! It should be a reasonable welcome. And this applies to all of Europe. And when did I realize how this reasonable welcome must be? When there was the terrorist attack in Zaventem [Belgium]: that young men, the guerillas who carried out the attack on Zaventem were Belgians, but sons of migrants who had not been integrated, but rather had been “ghettoized”! That is, they were received by the country and just left there, and they formed a ghetto. They were not integrated. Then I remembered when I went to Sweden, and Franca [Giansoldati] in an article mentioned this, of how I expressed this thought, and when I went to Sweden, I spoke about integration, and I knew about this because during the dictatorship in Argentina, from 1976 to 1983, many, many Argentines and also many Uruguayans escaped to Sweden and there the government would integrate them immediately. It taught them the language, gave them a job and integrated them. To the point that, this is an interesting anecdote, a Minister who came to bid me farewell at the airport in Lund was the daughter of a Swedish and an African immigrant. This African migrant was so integrated to the extent that his daughter became a minister. Sweden was a model. But in that moment Sweden was starting to have difficulties, not because it did not have the good will for this, but because it did not have the possibility of integration. This was the reason why Sweden stopped a little, and took this step. Integration. And then, I spoke during the press conference among you about the virtue of prudence, the virtue proper to the governor, and I spoke about the prudence of peoples regarding the number [of migrants to receive] or the possibility. A people that can receive but which does not have the means for integrating [migrants], it is better not to receive them. There, there is the issue of prudence. And I believe that this is the real core of the dialogue today in the European Union. We must continue to speak. Solutions will be found.

What happened with the Diciotti? I didn’t put my “hoof” there. It was Fr. Aldo [Fr. Aldo Bonaiuto] who did the work with the Minister of the Interior, the good Fr. Aldo who continues the work of Fr. Benzi, whom the Italians know well, who works for the liberation of prostitutes, those who are exploited, and many things… The Italian Bishops’ Conference was also involved. Cardinal Bassetti was there, but on the telephone; he guided all the mediation, and one of his two under-secretaries, Msgr. Maffeis negotiated with the Minister. And I believe that Albania was involved.. Albania, Ireland, and Montenegro, I think, took a certain number of migrants, I’m not sure. The others were taken up by the Conference, I don’t know if under the “umbrella” of the Vatican or not, I do not know how it was negotiated there, and they will go to the “Mondo Migliore” Centre at Rocca di Papa, they will be welcomed there. The number I believe is more than a hundred, and there they will begin to learn the language and to do that work that is done with integrated migrants. I have had an experience that was very gratifying. When I went to Roma Tre (University), there were students who wanted to ask me questions and I saw a student and thought, “I know this face”, and she was one who had come with me among the thirteen I brought back from Lesbos. And that girl was at the university! Why? Because the Sant’Egidio Community, from the day after her arrival, took her to school, to study: go on, go on! and had integrated her at a university level. This is work with migrants. There is an openness of heart for everyone, suffering, then integration as a condition for welcoming and then the prudence of those who govern for doing this. I have seen a clandestinely made film of the things that happen to those who are sent back and fall into the hans of traffickers. It is horrible, the things that they do to the men – the women and the children, they sell them, but to the men, they do the most sophisticated torture. There was one there who was capable, a spy, of making that film that I sent to my two under-secretaries for immigration. For this reason, before sending them back you have to think carefully, very carefully.

Then, one last thing: there are these migrants who come, but there are also those who are tricked, at Fiumicino, they are conned. “No, we give you work”. They let them all have papers, but they end up on the street, enslaved, under threat from traffickers of women. This is what happens.

Greg Burke:
Thank you, Holy Father. The next question is from the English-speaking group: Anna Matranga, from the NBC American television.

Anna Matranga, CBS:
Good evening, Holy Father! I will return to the matter of abuse, of which you have already spoken. Every early this morning a document was issued by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in which he says that in 2013 he had a personal conversation with you in the Vatican, and in this discussion he spoke with you explicitly about the behaviour and sexual abuse on the part of the ex-cardinal McCarrick. I wanted to ask you if this was true. And I also wanted to ask you another thing: the archbishop also said that Pope Benedict had sanctioned McCarrick, that he had said he could not live in the seminary, he could not celebrate Mass in public, he could not travel; he was sanctioned by the Church. Can I ask you if these two things are true?

Pope Francis:
One thing: I would prefer – although I will answer your question – I would prefer if first we spoke about the trip and then other matters… but I will answer. I read that letter this morning. I read it and sincerely I have to ask you this, you and all those among you who are interested: read it carefully, the letter, and then judge for yourselves. I will not say a word about this. I believe that the letter speaks for itself, and you have sufficient journalistic capacity to draw your conclusions. It is an act of trust: when a little time has passed and you have drawn your conclusions, perhaps I will speak. But I would like your professional maturity to do this work: it will do you good, truly. That’s good.

Anna Matranga:
Marie Collins has said, after having met with you during the meeting with victims, that she had spoken directly with you precisely about the ex-cardinal McCarrick; she said that you were very firm in your condemnation of McCarrick. I wanted to ask: when was the last time you heard talk of the abuses that the ex-cardinal had committed?

Pope Francis:
This is part of the letter on McCarrick: study it and then I will say. But since yesterday I had not read it, I allowed myself to speak clearly with Marie Collins and the group [of victims], in the meeting that lasted really an hour and a half; it was something that made me suffer greatly. But I think it was necessary to listen to those eight people; and from that meeting the proposal emerged – which I made myself and which they accepted and helped me to realize – of asking for forgiveness today in the Mass, but on concrete issues. For example, the last one, which I had heard:  those mothers, they called it the “cleansing” of women, when an unmarried woman became pregnant, she went to a hospital or, I don’t know what it was called, an institute – but there were religious sisters who ran it, and they gave the child up for adoption by other people. And there were children, at that time, who looked for their mothers, to know if they were alive, they didn’t know… and they were told that it was a mortal sin to do so; and also the mothers who looked for their children, they told them it was a mortal sin. This is why I finished today by saying that this is not a mortal sin, but rather the fourth commandment. And the things I said today, some of them I did not know, and it was painful for me, but also with the consolation of being able to help clarify these things. And I await your comment on that document, I would like to read it! Thank you.

Greg Burke:
Thank you, Holy Father. Now Cecile Chambraud of “Le Monde”.

Cecile Chambraud, “Le Monde”:
Good evening, Holy Father. I hope you do not mind if I ask my question in Spanish, and I ask you though to answer in Italian for all the colleagues. In your address to the Irish authorities, you referred to your recent Letter to the People of God. In that letter, you called upon all Catholics to participate in the fight against abuses in the Church. Can you explain to us what in concrete terms Catholics can do, each one in his or her own position, to fight against abuse? And in this regard, in France, a priest has started a petition calling for the resignation of Cardinal Barbarin, accused by victims. Does this initiative seem suitable or not?

Pope Francis:
If there are suspicions or evidence or partial evidence, I see no harm in carrying out an investigation, always on the basis of the fundamental legal principle: 
Nemo malus nisi probetur, innocent until proven guilty. And many times there is the temptation not only to carry out an investigation, but to publish that the investigation has been carried out and so in some media – not yours, I don’t know – they begin to create a climate of guilt. And I wish to say what happened in those times, which may help in this, because for me it is important how one proceeds and how the media can help. Three years ago, more or less, the problem of so-called paedophile priests began in Granada, a group of six, eight, ten priests, who were accused of abuse of minors and also of holding parties, orgies and these things. I received the accusation, directly: a letter written by a young man aged twenty-three; he said he had been abused, giving names and everything. A young man who worked in a religious college in Granada, very prestigious: the letter was perfect. And he asked me what could be done to report this. I said, “Go to the archbishop, the archbishop knows what you have to do”. The archbishop did all that he had to do, and the matter even arrived in the civil court. There were two trials. The media in the place had started to talk, to talk… Three days after, it was written all over the parish about “paedophile priests”, and things of that type, and so the idea that these priests were criminals was created. Seven were questioned, and nothing was found; the investigation continued regarding three of them, and they were imprisoned for five days, two of them, and one – Father Roman, who was the parish priest – for seven days. For almost three years they suffered hatred from all the population: criminalized, they could not come out, and they suffered humiliation from the jury in countering the accusations of the young man, which I dare not repeat here. After more than three years, the jury declared the priests innocent, all of them, but especially those three: the others were already out – and the accuser to be guilty. Because they had seen that the accuser liked to invent, but he was a very intelligent person who also worked in a Catholic college and had this prestige, which gave the impression he was telling the truth. He was ordered to pay costs and all these things, and they were innocent. These men were sentenced by the media first, before obtaining justice. And therefore your work is very delicate: you must accompany, you must say things but always with this legal presumption of innocence, and not the legal presumption of guilt! And there is a difference between the informer who informs on a case but does not bet on the outcome, and the investigator who acts like Sherlock Holmes, who goes ahead with the presumption of guilt. When we read the technique of Hercule Poirot: for him, everyone was guilty. But this is the role of the investigator. They are two different positions. But those who inform must always start out from the presumption of innocence, saying their impressions, their doubts, but without passing judgement. This case in Granada was for me an example that is good for us all, in our [respective] role.

Greg Burke:
The first part of the [preceding] question was what the people of God can do in relation to this matter…

Pope Francis:
Ah yes, yes. When we see something, speak immediately. I will tell you something else, not very nice. At times, it is the parents who cover up the abuse carried out by a priest. Many times. It can be seen in the sentences. They say, “But, no…”. They do not believe, or they convince themselves that it is not true, and that the boy or girl remains in this way. I receive one or two people a week, but it is not mathematical; and I received a person, a woman, who for forty years had suffered from this wound of silence, because her parents did not believe her. She was abused for eight years. To speak, this is important. It is true that for a mother, to see this… It would be better if it were not true, and perhaps to think that the son maybe has fantasies… But we must speak. And speak with the right people, speak with those who can initiate a judgement, at least a preliminary investigation. Speak with the magistrate or the bishop, or if the parish priest is good, speak to him This is the first thing the people of God can do. These things must not be covered up, they are not to be covered up. A psychiatrist told me some time ago, but I do not want this to be an offence to women, that out of a sense of maternity, women are more inclined than men to cover up issues relating to their children. But I do not know if it is true or not. But this is: speak. Thank you.

Greg Burke:
From the Spanish group there is Javier Romero, of “Rome Reports TV”.

Javier Romero:
Your Holiness, excuse me, I would like to ask you two questions. The first is that the Prime Minister of Ireland, who was very direct in his address, is proud of a new model of family different to the one traditionally proposed by the Church so far: he spoke about gay marriage. And this is perhaps one of the models that causes the most disagreement, especially in the case of a Catholic family, when there is a person in this family who declares to be homosexual. Holiness, the first question I would like to ask you is: what do you think, what would you say to a father whose son says he is homosexual and would like to go and live with his companion? This is the first question. And the second, that you too in the address to the prime minister spoke about abortion; we have seen how Ireland has changed greatly in recent years and it seemed that the Minister was indeed satisfied with these changes: one of these changes is in fact abortion. We have seen that in recent months, in recent years the issue of abortion has come out in many countries, including in Argentina, your country. What do you feel when you see that this is an issue you speak about often and there are many countries in which it occurs…

Pope Francis:
Good. I will start with the second, but there are two points – thank you for this- because they are linked to the matters we are talking about. On abortion, you know what the Church thinks. The problem of abortion is not a religious problem, we are not against abortion because of religion. No. It is a human problem, and it must be studied by anthropology. Studying abortion starting from the religious fact means sidestepping the thought. The problem of abortion must be studied by anthropology. And there is always the anthropological question of the ethical aspect of eliminating a living being to resolve a problem. But this is already the discussion. I want only to underline this: I never permit that the problem of abortion is discussed starting from the religious fact. No. It is an anthropological problem, it is a human problem. This is my thought.

Second. There have always been homosexuals and people with homosexual tendencies. Always. The sociologists say, but I do not know if it is true, that in times of epoch change some social and ethical problems grow, and this would be one of those. This is the opinion of some sociologists. Your question is clear: what would I say to a father who sees that his son or his daughter has that tendency. I would tell him, first of all, to pray: pray. Not to condemn, but to engage in dialogue, to understand, to give space to the son or daughter. Make space for them to express themselves. Then, at what age does this disquiet manifest itself? This is important. It is one thing when it is manifested in a child, when there are many things that can be done, to see how things are; it is another thing when it is manifested after twenty years or something like that. But I will never say that silence is the remedy: ignoring the son or daughter with a homosexual tendency is a lack of paternity and maternity. You are my son, you are my daughter, just as you are; I am your father, your mother, let us talk. And if you, father or mother, are not able to cope, then ask for help, but always in dialogue, always in dialogue. Because that son and that daughter have the right to a family and the family is the one that there is: do not push them out of the family. This is a serious challenge to paternity and maternity. I thank you for your question, thank you.

Greg Burke:
Thank you, Holy Father.

Pope Francis:
And then, I would like to say something to the Irish who are here: I found great faith in Ireland. A lot of faith. It is true, the Irish population has suffered greatly as a result of scandals. But there is faith, in Ireland, and it is strong. And in addition the Irish people know how to distinguish, and I quote what I heard today from a prelate: “The Irish people know how to distinguish well between the truth and half-truths: it is something they have within”. It is true that it is in the phase of processing, and of healing from this scandal; it is true that some open up to positions that seem to drift away from faith. But the Irish people have a faith that is rooted and strong. I want to say this because it is what I saw, I heard, and what I have found out about in these two days.

Thank you for your work, many thanks! And pray for me, please.

Greg Burke:
Thank you. Have a good dinner and a good rest.

https://zenit.org/articles/holy-fathers-in-flight-press-conference-on-return-from-ireland-full-text/

 

Full text of Pope Francis' in-flight press conference from Dublin

Pope Francis during an in-flight press conference.

Vatican City, Aug 26, 2018 / 07:05 pm (CNA).- Please read below for CNA's full transcript of the Pope's Aug. 26 in-flight press conference from Dublin to Rome:
 
 
Greg Burke:  Holy Father, thanks for this time you’re dedicating to us after two intense days. Certainly, there were difficult moments. In Ireland, there was the matter of abuses, but also very beautiful moments: the Festival of Families, testimonies from families, the meeting with the young couples and the visit to the Capuchins, but maybe you want to say something else first…

Pope Francis: To say thank you, because if I am tired I think of you who have work, work, work… I thank you so much for your effort and your work. Many thanks.

Greg Burke: The first question, as usual, comes from a journalist of the [host] nation which is Tony Connelly, RTE.

Tony Connelly, RTE: Your Holiness, you spoke on Saturday about the meeting you had with the minister for children. You talked about how moved you were by what she said about the mother and baby homes. What exactly did she tell you? Were you shocked because it was the first time you had heard of these homes?

Pope Francis: The minister first told me something that didn’t have too much to do with mother and children (Editor’s note: mother and baby homes). She told me, and she was brief: “Holy Father, we found mass graves of children, buried children, we’re investigating… and the Church has something to do with this.” But she said it very politely and truly with a lot of respect. I thanked her to the point that this had touched my heart. And, this is why I wanted to repeat it in the speech…  and it was not at the airport, I was mistaken, it was at the president’s. At the airport, there was another lady minister and I made the mistake there.

But, she told me, “I’ll send you a memo.” She sent me a memo and I haven’t been able to read it yet. I saw it was a memo, that she sent me a memo. She was very balanced in telling me, “There’s an issue, the investigation has not yet finished.” But, she made me understand that the Church has something to do with this. For me, this was an example of constructive collaboration, but also of, I don’t want to say the word “protest” … of complaint, of complaint for that which at one time maybe the Church was of help to do. That lady had a dignity that touched my heart, and now I have the memo there that I will study when I get home.

Greg Burke: Now, another Irishman, exchanging places, which is Paddy Agnew, who is from the Sunday Independent, a resident in Rome but an Irish journalist.

Paddy Agnew, Sunday Independent: Holy Father, thanks and good evening. Yesterday, Marie Collins, an abuse victim that you know well, said that you are not favorable to a new tribunal for Vatican inquiries on the issue of abuses, new inquiries on the problem of sexual abuse, and in particular on a so-called tribunal of inquiry on bishops, bishop accountability. Why do you think this is not necessary?

Pope Francis: (speaking over the last part of the question) No, no, it is not like this. Marie Collins is a bit fixated on the idea that came up. I esteem Marie Collins so much. At times, we call her to give Vatican conferences. She is fixated on the idea, the idea of the “madre amorevole” (editor’s note: The motu proprio, “As a loving mother”), in which it is said that to judge bishops, that it would be good to have a special tribunal. Then, we saw this wasn’t practical and it also wasn’t convenient for the different cultures of the bishops that had to be judged.

You take the recommendations of “madre amorevole” and you make the “giuria” (Editor’s note: a special commission of bishops) for each bishop, but it’s not the same. This bishop is judged and the Pope makes a “giuria” that is more capable of taking that case. It is a thing that works better and also because not all bishops are able to leave their dioceses. It’s not possible.

In this way, the tribunals, the “giurias” change. And that’s what we’ve done up until now. Rather many bishops have been judged. The latest is that of Guam, the Archbishop of Guam, who appealed. And, I decided - because it’s a very difficult case - to take the privilege that I have of taking on the appeal myself and not sending it to the council of appeal that does its work with all the priests. I took it upon myself. And made a commission of canonists that are helping me and they told me that when I get back, after a maximum of a month, a recommendation will be made so I can make a judgment. It is a complicated case, on one hand, but not difficult because the evidence is clear. I cannot pre-judge, I await the report and then I will judge. I say that the evidence is clear because there is this evidence which led the first tribunal to the condemnation.

This is the latest step. Now, there’s another and we’ll see how it ends. But, of course, I told Marie that the spirit and also the recommendation of “as a loving mother” is being done… a bishop is judged by a tribunal, but it isn’t always the same tribunal, as it is not possible. She did not understand that well. But, when I see her, sometimes she comes to the Vatican, I will explain it more clearly. I love her.

Greg Burke: Now, the Italian group. Holy Father, Stefania Falasca from Avvenire is coming.

Stefania Falasca, Avvenire: Good evening, Father.

Pope Francis: Good evening.

Falasca: You said also today that it is always a challenge to welcome migrants and the foreigner. Well, precisely yesterday a painful matter was resolved, that of the Diciotti ship. Is your hoof behind this solution? What was your involvement?

Pope Francis: The paw of the devil.

Falasca: Yes, then the second question: many in Europe see extortion on the backs of these people. What do you think?

Pope Francis: The welcoming of migrants is something as old as the bible. It’s in Deuteronomy, in the Commandments. God commands welcoming the migrant, the foreigner. It’s so old that it is in the spirit of revelation but also in the spirit of Christianity. It’s a moral principle. I spoke about this. Then, I saw that I needed to bit a bit more explicit because it’s not a welcoming with the “Belle etoile,” no! It should be a reasonable welcoming. That’s why Europe is all in this. And when did I realize how this reasonable welcome must be? When there was the terrorist attack in Zaventem (Editor’s note: the Brussels Airport), that that young men, the guerillas that made the attack on Zaventem were Belgians, but sons of migrants, not integrated, from ghettoes! That is, they were received by the country and left there, and they made a ghetto. They were not integrated. Then I remembered when I went to Sweden, and Franca (Editor’s note: Franca Giansoldati, Vatican correspondent for il Messaggero) in an article mentioned this, of how I explicitly made this though and when I went to Sweden, I knew it, I spoke about integration, as it was, because I knew because during the dictatorship in Argentina, from 1976 to 1983, many, many Argentinians and also many Uruguayans escaped to Sweden and there the government would integrate them immediately. It taught them the language, gave them a job and integrated them. To the point that, this is an interesting anecdote, a Minister who came to bid me farewell at the airport in Lund was the daughter of a Swedish and an African immigrant. This African migrant was so integrated to the extent that his daughter became a minister. Sweden was a model. But in that moment Sweden was beginning to have difficulties, not because it did not have the good will for this, but because it didn’t have the possibility of integration. This was the reason for which Sweden stopped for a bit. (After this step of integration) And then, I spoke during the press conference among you about the virtue of prudence, the virtue of the government. I spoke about the prudence of peoples, about the number or the possibility. A people that can receive but does not have the means to integrate [migrants], it’s better not to receive them. There, there is the issue of prudence. And I believe that this is the real core of the dialogue today in the European Union. We must continue to speak. Solutions will be found.

What happened with the Diciotti? I didn’t put my “paw” there. He who did the work with the minister of the interior was Fr. Aldo (Editor’s note: Fr. Aldo Bonaiuto, member of the Association “Giovanni XXIII”), the good Fr. Aldo that continues the work of Fr. Benzi, who the Italians know well, who work of liberating prostitutes, those that are exploited… The Italian Bishops’ Conference also was part. Cardinal Bassetti was there, but at the telephone, he guided everything by way of one of his two under-secretaries, Fr. Maffeis (Fr. Ivan Maffeis, director of communications) negotiated with the minister. And I believe that he went to Albania. Albania, Ireland took a number. Montenegro, I think not. I’m not sure. The others were picked up by the Conference, I don’t know if under the umbrella of the Vatican or not, I don’t know how it was negotiated there, and they’re going to a better world at Rocca di Papa (Editor’s note: an Italian town near Rome). They will be welcomed there. The number I believe that it is more than 100 and there they will begin to learn the language and to do that work that is done with integrated migrants. I’ve had an experience that was very gratifying for me. When I went to Roma Tre (University), there were students that wanted to ask me questions and I saw a student that “I know this face.” (Nour Essa, see story here, editor note), and it was one that had come with me among the 13 I brought back from Lesbos. And that girl was at the university because Sant’Egidio from the day after at school, to study, had integrated her at a university level. This is the work with migrants. There is an openness of heart for everyone, suffering, then integration as a condition for welcoming and then the prudence of those who govern for doing this. I have seen a clandestinely made film of the things that happen to those who are sent back. They are taken by the traffickers. Painful, the things that they do to the men...  the women and the children, out! They sell them. But to the men, they do the most sophisticated torture. There was one there that was capable, a spy, of making that film that I sent to my two under-secretaries for immigration (Editor’s note: Fr. Michael Czerny and Fr. Fabio Baggio, undersecretaries of the Migrants and Refugees Section). For this, to send them back you have to think well. Then, one last thing: there are these migrants that come, but there are also those who are tricked at Fiumicino. They are tricked. “We give you work, they give you documents.” And they end up on the sidewalk enslaved, under threat from traffickers of women. That’s it.

Greg Burke: Thanks, Holiness. Let’s go to the question from the English-speaking group. Anna Matranga from the American television, CBS.

Anna Matranga, CBS: Good evening, Holy Father.  I’ll return to the subject of sex abuse about which you’ve already spoken. This morning, very early, a document by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’ came out. In it, he says that in 2013 he had a personal talk with you at the Vatican, and that in that talk, he spoke to you explicitly of the behavior of and the sexual abuse by former-Cardinal McCarrick. I wanted to ask you if this was true.  I also wanted to ask something else: the Archbishop also said that Pope Benedict sanctioned McCarrick, that he had forbidden him to live in a seminary, to celebrate Mass in public, he couldn’t travel, he was sanctioned by the Church.  May I ask you whether these two things are true?

Pope Francis:  I will respond to your question, but I would prefer last first we speak about the trip, and then other topics.  I was distracted by Stefania, but I will respond.
I read the statement this morning, and I must tell you sincerely that, I must say this, to you and all those who are interested.  Read the statement carefully and make your own judgment.  I will not say a single word about this.  I believe the statement speaks for itself.  And you have the journalistic capacity to draw your own conclusions.  It’s an act of faith.  When some time passes and you have drawn your conclusions, I may speak.  But, I would like your professional maturity to do the work for you. It will be good for you. That’s good. (inaudible)

Matranga:  Marie Collins said that after she met you during the victims gathering, that she spoke with you precisely about ex-Cardinal McCarrick. She said you were very tough in your condemnation of McCarrick. I want to ask you, when was the first time that you heard talk about the abuses committed the former cardinal?

Pope Francis: This is part of the statement about McCarrick. Study it and then I will say.  Yesterday, I had not read it but I permitted myself to speak clearly with Marie Collins and the group, it was really an hour-and-a-half, something which made me suffer a lot.  But, I believe it was necessary to listen to these 8 people and from this meeting came the proposal. I made it, the others accepted and they helped me to do it, to ask forgiveness today in the Mass.  But, in concrete things.  The last thing.  I had never heard about those mothers, they called it the women’s laundry, when an unmarried woman got pregnant she went to the hospital, I don’t know what the school was called, and the sisters said that and then they gave the child away in adoption to people. There were two sons from that time, they tried to find their mothers, if they were alive.  And they would tell them that it was a mortal sin to do this, and to the mothers who called for their children also it was a mortal sin.  For this reason, today I finished by saying that this is not a mortal sin but it’s the fourth commandment.  And the things that I said today some I didn’t know (before). It was painful for me but I also had the consolation of being able to help clear these things up.  I await your comment on the document, I would like that. Thanks.

Greg Burke: Thanks, Holy Father. Now, Cecile Chambraud of Le Monde.

Cecile Chambraud, Le Monde: Good evening, Holy Father. I hope you don’t mind if I pose my question in Spanish. I ask you to reply in Italian for all of the colleagues. In your speech in Ireland, you refer to your recent letter to the people of God. In that letter, you call all Catholics to take part in the fight against abuses in the Church. Can you provide details for us what concretely Catholics can do each in their place to fight against these abuses and on this theme, in France, a priest has started a petition for the removal of Cardinal Barbarin accused by victims. Does this initiative appear adequate to you or not?

Pope Francis: If there are suspicions, proofs or half-proofs, I do not see anything bad in making an investigation, but always that is done according to the fundamental juridical principal of “nemo malus nisi probetur” - No one is evil until it is proven.  But many times there is the temptation not just to do the investigation but to publish that there is an investigation and why he’s culpable and so some media – not yours, I don’t know yours – to create a climate of culpability.  I will tell you something that happened to me in these days that can help with this… because for me it is important how you proceed, how the media can help. Three years ago, more or less, the problem of the so-called “pedophile priests” started in Granada, involving 7, 8 or 10 priests accused of abuse of minors and of having festival or orgies and this kind of thing.

I received the accusation myself, directly, a letter made by a young 23-year old, according to him he was abused, he gave his name and everything, a young man who was working in a prestigious college of Granada, and the letter was perfect. And he asked me what to do to report this. I told him to go to the archbishop of Granada and tell him this, and the archbishop will know what to do. He did, and the archbishop did all that he should do. Then it also went to the civil tribunal and so there were two processes.  But then the local media began to speak and speak (about this), and three days later, they wrote “in the parish, three pedophile priests” and so on, and in this way the consciousness was formed that the priests were criminals. 

Seven were interrogated and nothing was found. On three, the investigation went ahead and they stayed in jail, for five days, two of them and one, Fr. Romani, the parish priest, was in for 7 days. For almost three years and more, they suffered hate, slaps from the whole town… “criminals!” They couldn’t go outside. They suffered humiliations made by the “giuria” declared to prove the accusations of the boy, that I don’t dare repeat here. After three years, meanwhile, the “giuria” declares the priests innocent, all innocent, but most of all these three, the others were already out of the case and the accuser was then denounced because it was seen that he had a vivid imagination. He was very intelligent and he worked in a Catholic college, he had this prestige and gave the impression of telling the truth.

He was condemned and had to pay the expenses. These men (the priests) were condemned by the local media before justice was done. For this reason, your work is very important, you must accompany the investigation but there must be the presumption of innocence, not with the legal presumption of culpability. There is a difference between the informer who provides information on a case, who isn’t playing for a foreseen condemnation, and the one who investigates, who acts like Sherlock Holmes and presumes that everyone is guilty, When we read the technique of Hercules Poirot, for him everyone was guilty, but this is the work of the investigator. They are two very different positions: but those who inform must start from the presumption of innocence, but saying their admirations, but this is a bit special, but why, to say doubts, but without making condemnations. This case that happened in Granada for me is an example that it will do us all good in our work.
 
Greg Burke: In the first part, you asked what could the people of God do about the issue…

Pope Francis: When you see something, speak immediately. I will say another thing that’s a little nasty: many times there are parents that cover up the abuse of a priest. Many times. You see it in the condemnation. “No, but…” they don’t believe… They are convinced that it’s not true and the boy or the girl remain like that. I by method receive every week one or two, but it’s not mathematical. And I’ve received a person, a woman, that for 40 years suffered this scourge of silence because her parents didn’t believe: she was abused at 8 years old. Speak! This is important. It’s true that for a mother to see it is better that it wasn’t, seeks that the child maybe is dreaming… speak! And speak with the right people, speak with those who can start a judgment, at least an preliminary investigation. Speak with a judge, with the bishop and if the parish priest is good speak with the parish priest, this is the first thing the people of God can do, this should not be covered up. A psychiatrist told me time ago, but I don’t want that this be an offense for the women, that for sense of maternity, women are more inclined to cover the things of the child than men. But I don’t know if it’s true, but… speak!

Greg Burke: Holy Father, we’re moving… the Spanish group. There’s Javier Romero, of Rome Reports.

Javier Romero, Rome Reports: Holiness, excuse me but I’d like to pose two questions. The first is the that the Prime Minister of Ireland, who was very direct in his speech, is proud of the new model of family different from that which traditionally the Church has proposed up until now: I mean homosexual marriage. And this is perhaps one of the models that generates more battles, and I thought in the case especially of a Catholic family , when there is a person of this family that declares themselves to be homosexual. Holiness, the first question that I’d like to pose you is: what do you think, what would you say to a father whose son says he is homosexual, that he would like to go live with his… this is the first question. And the second that you also in your speech to the Prime Minister spoke about abortion, and we saw how Ireland has changed so much in recent years and that it seems that the Minister was satisfied at these changes. One of these changes was abortion, and we saw that in recent months, in recent years abortion has come out in many countries, Argentina among others, your country. How do you feel when you see this is an issue of which you speak often and that in many countries it’s put in…

Pope Francis: Alright. I’ll begin from the second, but there are two points. Thanks for this. There are two points that are connected to the matter that we’re speaking about, on abortion you know what is thought. The problem of abortion is not religious. We are not against abortion for religion, no! It’s a human problem and it should be studied anthropologically. To study abortion, beginning with the religious fact is to skip over thought. The problem of abortion should be studied anthropologically. There is always the anthropological problem of the ethics of eliminating a human being to resolve a problem. But this is already to enter into the discussion. I just want to underscore this: I will never allow that the discussion on abortion begins on the religious fact. No, it’s an anthropological problem, it’s a human problem. This is my thinking.

Second. There have always been homosexuals, people with homosexual tendencies. Always. Sociologists say, I don’t know if it’s true, that in times of epochal changes, some social, ethical phenomena increase; one of them would be this. This is an opinion of some sociologists. Your question is clear: what would I say to a father who sees that his son or daughter has that tendency? I would say first to pray, pray! Don’t condemn. Dialogue, understand, make space for son and the daughter. Make space so they can express themselves.

Then, at what age does this restlessness of the child express itself? It’s important. One thing is when it shows itself in a child. There are many things to do with psychiatry, to see how things are. Another thing is when it manifests itself after 20 years of age… But I’ll never say that silence is a remedy. To ignore a son or daughter with homosexual tendencies is a lack of paternity and maternity. You are my son, you are my daughter as you are! I’m your father, mother. Let’s talk! And if you, father and mother aren’t up to it, ask for help, but always in dialogue because that son and that daughter have the right to a family and that family of not being chased out of the family. This is a serious challenge, but that makes paternity and maternity. Thank you for the question! Thanks!

Greg Burke: Thanks to you, Holy Father.

Pope Francis: And then I would like to say something for the Irish that are here. I found so much faith in Ireland. So much faith. It’s true, the Irish people have suffered for the scandals. So much. But there is faith in Ireland. It’s strong. And also the Irish people know how to distinguish. And I cite what today I heard from a prelate: the Irish people know how to distinguish well between the truth and half-truths. It is something that they have within. It’s true that it’s in a process of elaboration, of healing from these scandals. It’s true that positions are being opened that seem to distance themselves from any faith. But the Irish people have a deep rooted faith. I want to say it because it’s what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard, of which in these two days I’ve been informed. Thanks for you work. Thanks a lot. And pray for me please.

Greg Burke: Thanks to you. Have a good dinner. Rest well!

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/full-text-of-pope-francis-in-flight-press-conference-from-dublin-48562

 

Ex-nuncio accuses Pope Francis of failing to act on McCarrick's abuse reports

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Credit: Edward Pentin / National Catholic Register.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Credit: Edward Pentin / National Catholic Register.

By Edward Pentin / National Catholic Register

Vatican City, Aug 25, 2018 / 07:00 pm (National Catholic Register).- In an 11-page written testament, a former apostolic nuncio to the United States has accused several senior prelates of complicity in covering up Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s allegations of sexual abuse, and has claimed that Pope Francis knew about sanctions imposed on then-Cardinal McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI but chose to repeal them.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 77, who served as apostolic nuncio in Washington D.C. from 2011 to 2016, wrote that in the late 2000s, Benedict had “imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis” and that Viganò personally told Pope Francis about those sanctions in 2013.

Archbishop Viganò said in his written statement that Pope Francis “continued to cover” for McCarrick and not only did he “not take into account the sanctions that Pope Benedict had imposed on him” but also made McCarrick “his trusted counselor,” claiming that the former archbishop of Washington advised the pope to appoint a number of bishops in the United States, including Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Joseph Tobin of Newark.

Archbishop Viganò, who said his “conscience dictates” that the truth be known as “the corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy,” ended his testimony by calling on Pope Francis and all of those implicated in the cover up of Archbishop McCarrick’s abuse to resign.  
 
On June 20, Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, on the order of Pope Francis, prohibited former Cardinal McCarrick from public ministry after an investigation by the New York archdiocese found an accusation of sexual abuse of a minor was “credible and substantiated.” That same day, the public learned that the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen in New Jersey had received three accusations of sexual misconduct involving adults against McCarrick.  Since then media reports have written of victims of the abuse, spanning decades, include a teenage boy, three young priests or seminarians, and a man now in his 60s who alleges McCarrick abused him from the age of 11. The pope later accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals.  

But Viganò wrote that Benedict much earlier had imposed sanctions on McCarrick “similar” to those handed down by Cardinal Parolin. “The cardinal was to leave the seminary where he was living,” Viganò said, “he was also forbidden to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance.”  Viganò did not document the exact date but recollected the sanction to have been applied as far back 2009 or 2010.

Benedict’s measures came years after Archbishop Viganò’s predecessors at the nunciature — Archbishops Gabriel Montalvo and Pietro Sambi — had “immediately” informed the Holy See as soon as they had learned of Archbishop McCarrick’s “gravely immoral behaviour with seminarians and priests,” the retired Italian Vatican diplomat wrote.

He said Archbishop Montalvo first alerted the Vatican in 2000, requesting that Dominican Father Boniface Ramsey write to Rome confirming the allegations. In 2006, Viganò said, he personally, as delegate for pontifical representations in the Secretariat of State, wrote a memo to his superior, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, proposing an “exemplary measure” be taken against McCarrick that could have a “medicinal function” to prevent future abuses and alleviate a “very serious scandal for the faithful.”

He drew on an indictment memorandum, communicated by Archbishop Sambi to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in which an abusive priest had made claims against McCarrick of “such gravity and vileness” including “depraved acts” and “sacrilegious celebration of the Eucharist.”   

But, according to Viganò, his memo was ignored and no action was taken until the late 2000s — a delay which Archbishop Viganò claims is owed to complicity of John Paul II’s and Benedict XVI’s respective Secretary of States, Cardinals Angelo Sodano and Tarcisio Bertone.

In 2008, Archbishop Viganò claims he wrote a second memo, this time to Cardinal Sandri’s successor as sostituto at the Secretariat of State, Cardinal Fernando Filoni. He included a summary of research carried out by Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and specialist in clerical sexual abuse, which Sipe had sent Benedict in the form of a statement. Viganò said he ended the memo by “repeating to my superiors that I thought it was necessary to intervene as soon as possible by removing the cardinal’s hat from Cardinal McCarrick.”

Again, according the Viganò, his request fell on deaf ears and he writes he was “greatly dismayed” that both memos were ignored until Sipe’s “courageous and meritorious” statement had “the desired result.”

“Benedict did what he had to do,” Archbishop Viganò told the National Catholic Register Aug. 25, “but his collaborators — the Secretary of State and all the others — didn’t enforce it as they should have done, which led to the delay.”  

“What is certain,” Viganò writes in his testimony, “is that Pope Benedict imposed the above canonical sanctions on McCarrick and that they were communicated to him by the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Pietro Sambi.”

The National Catholic Register has independently confirmed that the allegations against McCarrick were certainly known to Benedict, and the Pope Emeritus remembers instructing Cardinal Bertone to impose measures but cannot recall their exact nature.

In 2011, on arrival in Washington D.C., Archbishop Viganò said he personally repeated the sanction to 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.

In his written statement, Viganò then outlined his understanding of how, despite the allegations against him, McCarrick came to be appointed Archbishop of Washington D.C. in 2000 and how his misdeeds were covered up. His statement implicates Cardinals Sodano, Bertone and Parolin and he insists various other cardinals and bishops were well aware, including Cardinal Donald Wuerl, McCarrick’s successor as Archbishop of Washington D.C.

“I myself brought up the subject with Cardinal Wuerl on several occasions, and I certainly didn’t need to go into detail because it was immediately clear to me that he was fully aware of it,” he wrote.

Ed McFadden, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Washington, told CNA that Wuerl categorically denies having been informed that McCarrick’s ministry had been restricted by the Vatican.

The second half of Viganò’s testimony primarily deals with what Pope Francis knew about McCarrick, and how he acted.

He recalled meeting Cardinal McCarrick in June 2013 at the Pope’s Domus Sanctae Marthae residence, during which McCarrick told him “in a tone somewhere between ambiguous and triumphant: ‘The Pope received me yesterday, tomorrow I am going to China’” — the implication being that Francis had lifted the travel ban placed on him by Benedict (further evidence of this can be seen in this interview McCarrick gave the National Catholic Reporter in 2014).

At a private meeting a few days later, Archbishop Viganò said the pope asked him, “What is Cardinal McCarrick like?” to which Viganò replied: “He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance.” The former nuncio said he believes the pope’s purpose in asking him was to “find out if I was an ally of McCarrick or not.”
He said it was “clear” that “from the time of Pope Francis’s election, McCarrick, now free from all constraints, had felt free to travel continuously, to give lectures and interviews.”

Moreover, he added, McCarrick had “become the kingmaker for appointments in the Curia and the United States, and the most listened to advisor in the Vatican for relations with the Obama administration.”

Viganò claimed that the appointments of Cardinal Cupich to Chicago and Cardinal Joseph Tobin to Newark “were orchestrated by McCarrick” among others. He said neither of the names was presented by the nunciature, whose job is traditionally to present a list of names, or terna, to the Congregation for Bishops. He also added that Bishop Robert McElroy’s appointment to San Diego was orchestrated “from above” rather than through the nuncio.

The retired Italian diplomat also echoed the National Catholic Register’s reportsabout Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga and his record of cover-up in Honduras, saying the Pope “defends his man” to the “bitter end,” despite the allegations against him. The same applies to McCarrick, wrote Viganò.

“He [Pope Francis] knew from at least June 23, 2013 that McCarrick was a serial predator,” Archbishop 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 [regarding McCarrick] to save his image in the media,” wrote Viganò.

The former U.S. nuncio wrote that Pope Francis “is abdicating the mandate which Christ gave to Peter to confirm the brethren,” and urged him to “acknowledge his mistakes” and, to “set a good example to cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them.”  

In comments to the media Aug. 25 Viganò said 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.”

He also said he wanted to “discharge my conscience in front of God of my responsibilities as bishop for the universal Church,” adding that he is “old man” who wanted to present himself to God “with a clean conscience.”

“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. A priest should always be a light on a candle, everywhere and for all.”

This article was originally published by our sister newspaper, the National Catholic Register. It has been updated by CNA.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/ex-nuncio-accuses-pope-francis-of-failing-to-act-on-mccarricks-abuse-reports-81797

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/ex-nuncio-accuses-pope-francis-of-failing-to-act-on-mccarricks-abuse

 

Vigano testimony receives mixed response from US bishops

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Credit: CNA.

By Mary Rezac

Washington D.C., Aug 27, 2018 / 05:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Multiple bishops have responded to a testimony published over the weekend by a former apostolic nuncio to the United States, which called for the resignation of Pope Francis and several cardinals and bishops, who are alleged to have covered-up of sexual abuse allegations against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

In the testimony, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 77, who served as apostolic nuncio in Washington D.C. from 2011 to 2016, wrote that Benedict had “imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis” and that Viganò personally told Pope Francis about those sanctions in 2013.

Vigano claimed that this was ignored by Francis, who pulled McCarrick back into public ministry and allowed him to become a “kingmaker for appointments in the Curia and the United States.”

He added that this is how “the Pope replaced Cardinal Burke with Wuerl and immediately appointed Cupich (to the Congregation of Bishops) right after he was made a cardinal.”

In a statement issued Sunday, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago responded, saying that Vigano must be “confused about the sequence of these events,” as he was named to the Congregation of Bishops on July 7, 2016, before he was named a cardinal on October 9, 2016.

Vigano also claims in his testimony that Cupich’s appointment to Chicago and Bishop Joseph Tobin’s appointment to Newark “were orchestrated by McCarrick, Maradiaga and Wuerl, united by a wicked pact of abuses by the first, and at least of coverup of abuses by the other two. Their names were not among those presented by the Nunciature for Chicago and Newark.”

Cupich said he found these words “astonishing” because he had only ever received “supportive remarks and congratulations” from Vigano regarding his appointment to Chicago.

“As to the issue of my appointment to Chicago as well as the question of episcopal appointments in general, I do not know who recommended me for the Archdiocese of Chicago, but I do know that Pope Francis, like his predecessors, takes seriously the appointment of bishops as one of his major responsibilities,” Cupich said.  

Furthermore, Vigano asserts that Cupich is “blinded by his pro-gay ideology” because he has stated that the main issue in the sex abuse crisis is clericalism, rather than homosexuality, which Vigano says ignores findings “that 80% of the abuses found were committed against young adults by homosexuals who were in a relationship of authority over their victims.”

Cupich said that “any reference I have ever made on this subject has always been based on the conclusions of the ‘Causes and Context’ study by the John Jay School of Criminal Justice, released in 2011, which states: ‘The clinical data do not support the hypothesis that priests with a homosexual identity or those who committed same-sex sexual behavior with adults are significantly more likely to sexually abuse children than those with a heterosexual orientation or behavior.’”

At the end of his statement, Cupich called for a “thorough vetting of the former nuncio’s many claims...before any assessment of their credibility can be made.”

Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark is mentioned twice by Vigano, first along with Cupich, in Vigano’s assertion that his appointment to his current position was “orchestrated” by McCarrick, Maradiaga and Wuerl.

Vigano also accuses Tobin of supporting Father James Martin, S.J., a “well-known activist who promotes the LGBT agenda.”

In a statement issued Monday, Tobin and the Archdiocese of Newark expressed “shock, sadness and consternation at the wide-ranging array of allegations...which cannot be understood as contributing to the healing of survivors of sexual abuse.”

“The factual errors, innuendo and fearful ideology of the ‘testimony’ serve to strengthen our conviction to move ahead resolutely in protecting the young and vulnerable from any sort of abuse” and guaranteeing a safe environment for all, the statement said.

“Together with Pope Francis, we are confident that scrutiny of the claims of the former nuncio will help to establish the truth.”

Pope Francis on Sunday responded to questions about Vigano’s testimony by saying that he will “not say a single word about it” and encouraged journalists and Catholics to study the testimony and its claims and draw their own conclusions.

Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego is also mentioned by Vigano, who claims that his appointment to San Diego was also “orchestrated from above” by Cardinal Parolin. He also alleged that McElroy knew of “McCarrick’s abuses, as can be seen from a letter sent to him by Richard Sipe on July 28, 2016.”

In his response issued in a statement on Monday, McElroy slams Vigano’s testimony as a “distortion” that does not attempt to “comprehensively convey the truth.”

“In its ideologically-driven selection of bishops who are attacked, in its clear efforts to settle old personal scores, in its omission of any reference to Archbishop Vigano’s own massive personal participation in the covering up of sexual abuse by bishops, and most profoundly in its hatred for Pope Francis and all that he has taught, Archbishop Vigano consistently subordinates the pursuit of comprehensive truth to partisanship, division and distortion,” McElroy said.

“We as bishops cannot allow the pathway of partisanship to divide us or to divert us from the searing mission that Christ calls us to at this moment,” he added.

“We must make public our sinful past. We must engage and help heal the survivors of abuse. We must develop new, lay-governed instruments of oversight and investigation in every element of how we confront sexual abuse by clergy at all levels in the life of the Church. And we must reject all attempts to subordinate these goals to ideological or personal projects. For if we do not, we will have betrayed the victims of abuse once again.”

The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., of which Cardinal Donald Wuerl is the head, issued a statement reiterating that Wuerl has “categorically denied that any of this information was communicated to him” regarding any sanctions against McCarrick and his ministry.  

“Archbishop Viganò at no time provided Cardinal Wuerl any information about an alleged document from Pope Benedict XVI with directives of any sort from Rome regarding Archbishop McCarrick,” the archdiocese stated.

“Archbishop Viganò has not produced in his testimony any objectively verifiable proof that he in any way communicated to Cardinal Wuerl restrictions imposed on Cardinal McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI. In fact, Archbishop Viganò’s testimony says that he did not.”

Vigano wrote it was “absolutely unthinkable” that Archbishop Pietro Sambi, nuncio at the time the restrictions were imposed, would not have informed Wuerl about the restrictions placed upon McCarrick.

Wuerl’s spokesperson Ed McFadden told CNA on Saturday that Vigano “presumed that Wuerl had specific information that Wuerl did not have” regarding any specific allegations or sanctions against McCarrick.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and McCarrick, both mentioned in the testimony, have not issued responses as of press time.

While Archbishop Charles Chaput is not directly mentioned in the Vigano testimony, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, which he heads, is mentioned several times, and its leader is mentioned as someone opposed by Francis and McCarrick.

Chaput’s spokesperson said that the archbishop “enjoyed working with Archbishop Vigano during his tenure as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States and found his service to be marked by integrity to the Church.”

However, Chaput declined to comment on Vigano’s testimony, “as it is beyond his personal experience."

Critics of Vigano have called the credibility of his testimony into question, in part because of Vigano’s own involvement of the case of Archbishop John C. Nienstedt, previously of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Nienstedt was accused of covering up multiple cases of clerical sexual abuse in his diocese at the time, and an investigation reportedly revealed further allegations of sexual misconduct towards seminarians on Nienstedt’s part.  

In 2016, a document was made public accusing Vigano of suppressing a 2014 investigation into Nienstedt. The memo, written by Father Dan Griffith, an archdiocesan priest who was a liaison to the lawyers conducting an independent investigation into Archbishop Nienstedt, reported that Vigano ordered the halt of the investigation into Nienstedt and the destruction of evidence once sexual and criminal allegations against Nienstedt were uncovered.

The move was “a good old fashioned cover-up to preserve power and avoid scandal and accountability,” Griffith said in the memo.

Some bishops not mentioned in the testimony have also issued responses to it, mostly calling for prayer and transparency.

Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, issued a statement to his diocese saying that while Vigano’s claims have not been investigated and are “still allegations...as your shepherd I find them to be credible.”

He called for a “thorough investigation” of the testimony and said while he does not have the authority to launch such an investigation, “I will lend my voice in whatever way necessary to call for this investigation and urge that it’s findings demand accountability of all found to be culpable even at the highest levels of the Church.”

When asked by CNA why Strickland believed Vigano’s claims were credible, diocesan spokesman Luke Heinstschel responded, saying that Strickland had said “all that he wished to say for the time” in his original statement, and that “he asks that we all pray for bishops and priests at this time.”

Bishop David Konderla of the Diocese of Tulsa said on his personal Facebook page that he counts himself “blessed that it was Archbishop Viganò who called me to tell me that I was appointed fourth bishop of Tulsa.”

“The allegations he details mark a good place to begin the investigations that must happen in order for us to restore holiness and accountability to the leadership of the Church,” he added. “Now is the time for us to re-double our prayers for the church and for the victims of these crimes. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.”

Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix said in a statement that he has known Vigano since 1979 and, “I have always known and respected him as a man of truthfulness, faith and integrity.”

While he said he had no personal knowledge of the allegations contained in his testimony, he asked that it be “taken seriously by all, and that every claim that he makes be investigated thoroughly. Many innocent people have been seriously harmed by clerics like Archbishop McCarrick; whoever has covered up these shameful acts must be brought to the light of day.”

Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit issued a statement in which he said Catholics have “nothing to fear” in the face of Vigano’s claims because the “truth will set us free.”

“Whether the Archbishop’s claims are confirmed or proved to be unfounded, the truth which comes to light will show us the sure path to the purification and reform of the Church.”

He called on Catholics to pray for truth and transparency in the coming days, and urged Catholics to not lose hope.

“Christ has not abandoned us in this time of crisis. By his rising, he is Lord of all history. And in these trials, he seeks to restore the vitality of his Church,” he said.

“We must respond with abandonment to his designs, to identify the grace he offers us in this moment and to accept it willingly regardless of the cost. If we respond with hope, the Lord will take us to a new place from which we can go forth to unleash the Gospel with new power and new strength.”  

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vigano-testimony-receives-mixed-response-from-us-bishops-89214

 

The Man Who Took On Pope Francis: The Story Behind the Viganò Letter



Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in Chicago in 2014, has shaken the Roman Catholic Church to its core.CreditCreditPool photo by Charles Rex Arbogast

By Jason Horowitz - August 28, 2018

ROME — At 9:30 a.m. last Wednesday, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò showed up at the Rome apartment of a conservative Vatican reporter with a simple clerical collar, a Rocky Mountains baseball cap and an explosive story to tell.

Archbishop Viganò, the former chief Vatican diplomat in the United States, spent the morning working shoulder to shoulder with the reporter at his dining room table on a 7,000-word letter that called for the resignation of Pope Francis, accusing him of covering up sexual abuse and giving comfort to a “homosexual current” in the Vatican.

The journalist, Marco Tosatti, said he had smoothed out the narrative. The enraged archbishop brought no evidence, he said, but he did supply the flair, condemning the homosexual networks inside the church that act “with the power of octopus tentacles” to “strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations.”

“The poetry is all his,” Mr. Tosatti said.

When the letter was finished, Archbishop Viganò took his leave, turning off his cellphone. Keeping his destination a secret because he was “worried for his own security,” Mr. Tosatti said, the archbishop then simply “disappeared.”


The letter, published on Sunday, has challenged Pope Francis’ papacy and shaken the Roman Catholic Church to its core. The pope has said he won’t dignify it with a response, yet the allegations have touched off an ideological civil war, with the usually shadowy Vatican backstabbing giving way to open combat.

The letter exposed deep ideological clashes, with conservatives taking up arms against Francis’ inclusive vision of a church that is less focused on divisive issues like abortion and homosexuality. But Archbishop Viganò — who himself has been accused of hindering a sexual misconduct investigation in Minnesota — also seems to be settling old scores.

As the papal ambassador, or nuncio, in the United States, Archbishop Viganò sided with conservative culture warriors and used his role in naming new bishops to put staunch conservatives in San Francisco, Denver and Baltimore. But he found himself iced out after the election of Pope Francis.

Then in 2015, he personally ran afoul of Francis. His decision to invite a staunch critic of gay rights to greet the pope in Washington during a visit to the United States directly challenged Francis’ inclusive message and prompted a controversy that nearly overshadowed the trip.

Juan Carlos Cruz, an abuse survivor with whom Francis has spoken at length, said the pope recently told him Archbishop Viganò nearly sabotaged the visit by inviting the critic, Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who became a conservative cause célèbre when she refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“I didn’t know who that woman was, and he snuck her in to say hello to me — and of course they made a whole publicity out of it,” Pope Francis said, according to Mr. Cruz.

“And I was horrified and I fired that nuncio,” Mr. Cruz recalled the pope saying.

Now, three years later, Archbishop Viganò appears to be trying to return the favor.

Known for his short temper and ambition, Archbishop Viganò has clashed with superiors who stunted his ascent in the church and has played a key role in some of the most stunning Vatican scandals of recent times.

Marco Tosatti, a journalist, helped Archbishop Viganò compose a letter that called for the resignation of Pope Francis.CreditJason Horowitz/The New York Times

While Archbishop Viganò, who was once criticized by church traditionalists as overly pragmatic, has aligned himself with a small but influential group of church traditionalists who have spent years seeking to stop Francis, many of his critics think his personal grudges are central to his motivations.

After one church leader shipped him out of the Vatican to America, thwarting his hopes of receiving a scarlet cardinal’s hat, Archbishop Viganò’s private 2011 memos — many of them deeply unflattering to the leader responsible for his ouster from Rome — were leaked and splashed around the globe.

Supporters of Archbishop Viganò, who did not return a request for comment, bristle at the notion that his letter calling on the pope to resign represents the fury of a disgruntled excellency. They portray him as principled and shocked by what he sees as the destruction of the church he loves.

Mr. Tosatti said the archbishop had explained to him that, as a bishop, he felt a deep responsibility to the church and that, as a 77-year-old man, he wanted to clear his conscience for when his moment came. But he said the archbishop was also infuriated by a recent article in the Italian press sympathetic to Pope Francis and critical of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI — and felt he needed to retaliate.

Archbishop Viganò is well versed in Vatican infighting. In 1998, he became a central official in the Vatican’s powerful office of the secretary of state. In the letter, he writes that his responsibilities included overseeing ambassadors out in the world, but also the “examination of delicate cases, including those regarding cardinals and bishops.”

It was then he says he first learned of the abuses committed by Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the American Catholic leader whose history he says Pope Francis knew about for years — and covered up.

In 2009, Archbishop Viganò, then a bishop, was moved to another job in the Vatican with less influence over policy but with power over some of its revenue.

Known as parsimonious, he turned Vatican City’s deficit into a surplus. But his hard management style prompted complaints, and anonymous emails alleging that he was inappropriately promoting the career of his nephew began making the rounds in the Vatican. His style and rigor on vetting Vatican contracts also bothered some leaders, including Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, and an anonymous report in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale claimed he had designs on the Vatican’s security services.

Cardinal Bertone, who Archbishop Viganò writes in the letter “notoriously favored promoting homosexuals,” banished him to the United States.

Throughout his power struggle, Archbishop Viganò had been writing urgent appeals to Benedict to stay in the Vatican.

He said he needed to stay because his brother, a Jesuit biblical scholar, was sick and needed care, and he accused Cardinal Bertone of breaking his promise to promote him to the rank of cardinal.

In 2012, when he was already in the United States as nuncio, or ambassador, the letters started appearing in leaks eventually pinned on the pope’s butler. The scandal consumed the Vatican and prompted intense blowback.

But Archbishop Viganò’s brother, Lorenzo Viganò, told Italian journalists that his brother “lied” to Benedict that he had to remain in Rome “because he had to take care of me, sick.” To the contrary, he said he had lived in Chicago and was fine and hadn’t talked to his brother in years over an inheritance dispute.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a sexual abuse survivor who has spoken with Pope Francis.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

Archbishop Viganò maintained his position as ambassador in the United States after the election of Francis. But in the letter published Sunday, he alleged that the former Cardinal McCarrick “orchestrated” the selection of bishops blinded by a gay ideology that he blames for the sex abuse crisis.

Yet Archbishop Viganò has been accused of covering up misconduct as well. According to documents disclosed as part of a criminal investigation into the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese, he ordered bishops in April 2014 to quash an investigation into accusations that Archbishop John Nienstedt engaged in sexual misconduct with adult men and adult seminarians.

Archbishop Viganò, anticipating the criticism, gave Mr. Tosatti a statement denying those reports.

After angering Francis during the Kim Davis episode, Archbishop Viganò was called back to Rome to explain himself. In a sign of his desire to move back permanently, he refused to give up his Vatican apartment. Reports in the Italian media this week asserted that after removing Archbishop Viganò from his position, Pope Francis also kicked him out of his Vatican apartment.

But Archbishop Viganò returned from his Milan home often enough, joining forces with traditionalists antagonistic to Pope Francis.

And he returned this summer to get working on the letter.

About a month ago, Mr. Tosatti said he received a call from the archbishop asking if he could meet with him in a discreet place. Archbishop Viganò told the reporter his story, but said he wasn’t ready to go on the record.

But when news of decades of widespread clerical abuse in Pennsylvania broke, Mr. Tosatti urged the archbishop to tell his story. On Aug. 22, he returned, this time with a written statement.

Mr. Tosatti said that he saw no documents or other evidence, and after three hours, they finished.

The archbishop asked Mr. Tosatti if he knew anyone who could publish it in English and Spanish. Mr. Tosatti sent the letter to the National Catholic Register, which is owned by a company that runs several conservative Catholic platforms often critical of Francis.

“They are all tied,” said Mr. Tosatti, who said that he alone helped draft and distribute the letter.

Its publication was delayed, not so that it would blow up Francis’ trip to Ireland over the weekend amid the sexual abuse crisis, he said, but so that it could be translated.

After they were done writing it, Mr. Tosatti said he accompanied Archbishop Viganò to the door and bowed to kiss his ring, only to see the hand pull back.

Mr. Tosatti explained that it wasn’t a personal respect he wanted to show, but respect for his office and authority.

“It’s not for you,” Mr. Tosatti recalled telling him as tears welled in the archbishop’s eyes. “It’s for the role you have.”

The archbishop told him, “Now that I have finished, I can leave, and leave Rome too,” according to Mr. Tosatti.

“Where will you go?” Mr. Tosatti recalled asking.

“I will not tell you so that when they ask you, you will not have to lie — and I will shut off my phone,” the archbishop said, according to the reporter, who said that both men suspected the Vatican of tapping their phones.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Pope’s Accuser: Keeper of Faith Or of Grudges?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/world/europe/archbishop-carlo-maria-vigano-pope-francis.html

 

Is there truth in Archbishop Vigano's text and how are Catholics to know?

 

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, then nuncio to the United States, congratulates then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington at a gala dinner sponsored by the Pontifical Missions Societies in New York in May 2012. The archbishop has since said Cardinal McCarrick already was under sanctions at that time, including being banned from traveling and giving lectures. Oblate Fr. Andrew Small, center, director of the societies, said Vigano never tried to dissuade him from honoring the cardinal at the gala. (CNS/PMS/Michael Rogel)

VATICAN CITY — Catholics in the pews and even priests in the Vatican are confused about the long document Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano published claiming Pope Francis turned a blind eye to information he had about the sexual misconduct of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick.

Francis' response to journalists Aug. 26 that they should read the document carefully, investigate and make their own decisions was not a big help.

Littered with repeated accusations about a "homosexual current" of cardinals and archbishops close to Francis, the document's central claim is that Francis knew about McCarrick's abusive behavior as early as June 2013 and did nothing about it.

In fact, Vigano said, Francis, "in the case of McCarrick, not only did not oppose evil but associated himself in doing evil with someone he knew to be deeply corrupt. He followed the advice of someone he knew well to be a pervert, thus multiplying exponentially with his supreme authority the evil done by McCarrick."

Vigano states that in "2009 or 2010" Pope Benedict XVI "had imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis: the cardinal was to leave the seminary where he was living, he was forbidden to celebrate (Mass) in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance."

But such a sanction was never announced publicly.                                                               

It could be that Benedict did not want to draw attention to behavior that was not public knowledge. But, as one canon lawyer at the Vatican told Catholic News Service Aug. 28, "at best it's weird, an anomaly" not to publish a sanction that has public consequences, such as forbidding the cardinal to celebrate Mass publicly or make public appearances.

Yet, McCarrick continued to celebrate Mass publicly in the United States and to visit the Vatican, even being part of group audiences with Pope Benedict and later Francis. Also strange is the fact that Vigano himself appeared at public events with McCarrick, including at a May 2, 2012, gala dinner of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, which honored Cardinal as a "Pontifical Ambassador for Mission."

Oblate Fr. Andrew Small, director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, told Catholic News Service Aug. 29 that neither Vigano nor anyone from the nunciature tried to dissuade the societies from giving the honor to McCarrick.

Clearly, if there were sanctions, they were not enforced. But the question remains, were there sanctions and did Francis know about them before this summer when the Archdiocese of New York announced an investigation found credible evidence that McCarrick sexually abused a minor?

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and many individual bishops have asked for a thorough investigation of the McCarrick situation, including Vigano's claims.

"The questions raised deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence," DiNardo said Aug. 27. "Without those answers, innocent men may be tainted by false accusations and the guilty may be left to repeat sins of the past."

In the eyes of many, the fact that Vigano consulted with and was even assisted by journalists and bloggers who have worked publicly to oppose and discredit Francis does not help his cause.

One of those involved was Aldo Maria Valli, author of the blog "Duc in Altum," which has been very critical of Francis since the publication of "Amoris Laetitia" on the family. Valli wrote Aug. 27 that Vigano called him more than a month ago wanting to talk to him. Valli invited the archbishop to dinner at his home.

"He was worried about the church and feared that at its top there were people who were not working to bring the Gospel of Jesus to today's men and women, but to sow confusion and give in to the logic of the world," Valli wrote.

As they walked to the archbishop's car at the end of the evening, Valli said Vigano told him, "Don't call me. I'll get in touch with you."

A month later, the archbishop called again. And during another dinner in the Valli home, "he cited the case of McCarrick, the former cardinal held guilty of serious abuse, and he let it be known that everyone -- in the USA and the Vatican -- knew about it for a long time, for years. And yet they covered it up."

The archbishop said he would send a document to Valli to read and to publish or not as he saw fit. Valli said he asked if it would be an exclusive, and Vigano told him, "No. I will give it to another Italian blogger, an Englishman, an American and a Canadian. There will be translations in English and Spanish."

They spoke later and agreed on the date and time of publication, Valli said. "He decided on Sunday, Aug. 26, because the pope, returning from Dublin, would have an opportunity to reply, responding to the journalists' questions on the plane."

The other Italian blogger and papal critic, former journalist Marco Tosatti, told the Associated Press that he helped Vigano edit the document for publication. The meeting Aug. 22, he said, came after a similar, earlier phone call and meeting like Vigano had with Valli.

After the Pennsylvania grand jury report came out, Tosatti told AP that he told Vigano, "I think that if you want to say something, now is the moment, because everything is going upside-down in the United States. He said 'OK.'"

The National Catholic Register, which is owned by EWTN, and the Canada-based LifeSiteNews also received the text in advance. The LifeSiteNews Rome-based writer did the official translation of Vigano's document into English.

The Register reported Aug. 25 that it had "independently confirmed that the allegations against McCarrick were certainly known to Benedict, and the pope emeritus remembers instructing Cardinal Bertone to impose measures but cannot recall their exact nature." Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone was Vatican secretary of state.

But Archbishop Georg Ganswein, the retired pope's personal secretary, told the German newspaper Die Tagespost Aug. 28 that Pope Benedict did not and would not comment on Vigano's document. The Register then replied that it never said Pope Benedict had read Vigano's report or that he had commented on it, only that Pope Benedict remembered wanting to impose sanctions of some sort.

Some things are clear: Vigano's document was prepared in consultation with at least one of the bloggers and journalists who were the first to publish it; the archbishop's document is filled with rhetoric indicating a broader agenda than just ending clerical sexual abuse; and the release of the document was coordinated and timed to have maximum impact.

What is not clear is if there were sanctions imposed on McCarrick and, if there were, did Francis know about them. And as of Aug. 29, neither Francis nor the Vatican press office has provided an answer.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/there-truth-archbishop-viganos-text-and-how-are-catholics-know

 

With Vatican In Turmoil Over Abuse Allegations, Questions Remain About What Pope Knew

August 29, 20181:22 PM ET

by Sylvia Poggioli

For centuries, the words "Vatican" and "intrigue" have gone hand in hand. But the Holy See's centuries-old code of secrecy ensured that scandals and conspiracies usually remained hidden behind the tall and sturdy Renaissance walls of the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, unbeknownst to the faithful masses around the world.

Now, in the era of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, mudslinging between rival church factions is being waged out in the open.

"It's as if the Borgias and the Medicis had Twitter accounts," Christopher Bellitto, a professor of church history at Kean University in New Jersey, told the National Catholic Reporter.

The power struggle has been simmering ever since the Argentine-born Jorge Maria Bergoglio became Pope Francis in 2013. He signaled a break with his two predecessors by promoting a message of mercy over strict dogma, of inclusion over punishment.

The anger of a traditionalist faction critical of the pope's more welcoming church broke out into the open for the whole world to see last weekend, with the publication by conservative Catholic media outlets of a bombshell letter by a former Vatican diplomat. The letter was released just as the pope was on a highly charged visit to Ireland — ground zero in the clerical sex abuse crisis.

The vitriolic 11-page letter by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Vatican's former ambassador to the United States, is filled with innuendo. Mixing factual and ideological claims, it accuses Francis of knowing and ignoring allegations of sexual misconduct by the recently disgraced Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., who resigned as cardinal last month. In the letter, Viganò calls on the pope to step down for complicity in covering up crimes.

In the unprecedented attack, Viganò makes numerous unsubstantiated claims. He says that in 2013, he personally informed the new pope that McCarrick had been widely accused of inviting seminarians into his bed and that Francis' predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had punished McCarrick by forbidding him to celebrate Mass in public, give lectures and travel. Benedict, he says, ordered McCarrick to dedicate himself to a life of prayer and penance. Viganò claims that Francis overruled those sanctions and virtually rehabilitated McCarrick.

The wrinkles in Viganò's claim are that there is no public knowledge that Benedict ever issued any kind of sanctions against McCarrick and that it contradicts the historical record. McCarrick was often seen celebrating Mass, visiting Rome and attending events with Benedict. It is possible that the former pope did impart those orders secretly and for some reason was unable or unwilling to enforce them.

The known fact is that when credible allegations recently surfaced that McCarrick had abused a minor, it was Francis who elicited his resignation as cardinal — an extremely rare occurrence in the Catholic Church.

Viganò's letter, titled "Testimony," also contains accusations of cover-ups by about a dozen cardinals who served under Pope Benedict XVI and St. John Paul II when he was pope — many of whom Viganò has clashed with in the past. It makes no mention of the fact that Viganò himself once tried to quash a probe into a Minneapolis archbishop being investigated for misconduct with seminarians.

That Vatican officials have covered up clerical sex abuse is an open secret.

It is public knowledge that during John Paul II's papacy, one of the cardinals named in Viganò's letter — former Vatican Secretary of State (equivalent to Prime Minister) Angelo Sodano — long protected the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, a Mexican priest who founded the Legion of Christ. Maciel, who died in 2008, turned out to be a serial predator of minors and was removed from active ministry by Benedict.

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro — who headed the biggest-ever U.S. investigation into clerical sex abuse, uncovering seven decades of abuse of more than 1,000 victims by some 300 priests — said his office had evidence the Vatican knew about cover-ups. But he could not verify whether Francis had direct knowledge of the crimes.

The Viganò letter rarely mentions children — the prime victims of clerical sex abuse. Rather, it reads like an ideological screed, a homophobic manifesto. The retired archbishop belongs to a traditionalist church faction, critical of what it decries as Francis' gay-friendly agenda. Those traditionalists blame clerical sex abuse on the presence of homosexuals in the church and believe Francis is too lenient with gays.

Viganò calls for the eradication inside the church of what he calls "homosexual networks which ... act under the concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus tentacles and strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations and are strangling the entire church."

Most secular experts reject the identification of homosexuality with pedophilia as retrograde and encouraging anti-gay bigotry.

Francis and his supporters in the church mostly blame clericalism — a sense of superiority, exclusion and entitlement among the clergy that distances them from the laity — for creating a culture where the crimes of pedophilia are committed.

On the flight back to Rome from Ireland Sunday evening, reporters asked Francis two key questions — whether it was true that Viganò had told him about McCarrick and whether Benedict had issued sanctions on McCarrick.

Francis answered neither question, dismissed the letter and told reporters to read it and judge for themselves.

One of the pope's closest aides, the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, editor of the Vatican-approved Civiltà Cattolica, tweeted that Francis has never publicly "defended himself against the accusations ... because he *knows* that sooner or later the truth will surface."

Nevertheless, those crucial questions are still hanging, unanswered, which has emboldened the pope's critics. Many of those critics are in the United States, where conservative Catholics are among Francis' strongest opponents for his stands on climate change, against laissez-faire capitalism and in favor of protection of migrants and refugees — as well as his opening to Cuba and to divorced Catholics.

Referring to Viganò's allegations, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, told his diocese in a letter, "I will lend my voice in whatever way necessary to call for this investigation and urge that its findings demand accountability of all found to be culpable at the highest level of the church."

And, commenting on the Viganò letter, the ultraconservative Rome-based Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American, told the conservative Catholic website LifeSiteNews, "After the truth of each declaration has been established, then the appropriate sanctions must be applied both for the healing of the horrible wounds inflicted upon the Church and her members, and for the reparation of the grave scandal caused."

In 2016, Burke and three other cardinals wrote a public letter known as the dubia("doubts" in Latin), in which they accused Francis of sowing confusion on moral issues.

Viganò himself has a reputation as a disgruntled prelate with an ax to grind. In 2012, detailed letters he wrote to Benedict accusing other prelates of financial corruption were leaked to the Italian media and led to the Vatileaks scandal that is said to have persuaded Benedict to step down as pope.

While Viganò presented himself as a whistleblower, many inside the Vatican began to question his credibility. As Vatican ambassador to the United States from 2011 to 2016, Viganò took active part in the "culture wars." That proved his undoing.

During Francis' visit to the U.S. in 2015, the ambassador orchestrated a meeting between the pope and Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who had been jailed for five days for refusing to issue same-sex-marriage licenses because of her religious beliefs. News of the meeting — which contrasted with Francis' message of inclusion — broke days later and reportedly infuriated the pope, who summoned Viganò back to Rome.

In the days since Viganò's latest bombshell, more details have emerged as to how his letter came about. Marco Tosatti, a conservative Italian journalist who has covered the Vatican for many years, told the Associated Press he helped Viganò write the letter and that he persuaded the former archbishop to make it public after the Aug. 15 release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report.

Tosatti says Viganò has gone into hiding to avoid the media onslaught and told the New York Times Viganò was "worried for his own security."

Another person who appears to have encouraged Viganò to speak out is Timothy Busch, a conservative American Catholic on the board of governors of the media network that owns the National Catholic Register, one of the outlets that first published Viganò's letter.

Busch told the New York Times, "Archbishop Viganò has done us a great service" and said the National Catholic Register's leaders "had personally assured him" that Benedict had confirmed Viganò's account, the paper reported.

But the retired pope's secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, told a German newspaper that reports that Benedict had confirmed Viganò's letter "lack any foundation."

On Tuesday evening, quoting close aides of Francis, the Italian news agency ANSA reported that the pope is "embittered" by the Viganò letter but "is not contemplating a resignation."

Even before the Viganò letter was released, clerical pedophilia in many countries around the world had become the biggest crisis of Francis' papacy, with survivors of abuse demanding the pope undertake much more concrete steps to hold accountable those bishops who ignored or willfully covered up predator priests. Conservatives, meanwhile, based their attacks on the pope on doctrinal issues.

Now, after the letter's release, Francis' opponents have raised the stakes, trying to de-legitimize him by accusing the pope directly of covering up sexual abuse. The battle lines have been drawn — the weapon is the issue of clerical sex abuse; the target is the papacy of Francis. The next battleground is likely to be the Youth Synod, a major meeting of Catholic bishops from all over the world, to be held in Rome in October.

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/29/642680906/with-vatican-in-turmoil-over-abuse-allegations-questions-remain-about-what-pope

 

Facts and omissions of Viganò’s testimony against Francis

A lucid reading of the former nuncio’s statement requesting the Pontiff’s resignation and its contradictory conclusions

2 May 2012, during Benedict XVI’s Pontificate, the nuncio Viganò participates to the awarding of the “sanctioned” Cardinal McCarrick (photo taken from Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s blog)

ANDREA TORNIELLI

“I believe that the Viganò press release speaks for itself, and you have the professional maturity to draw conclusions. With these words, addressed to journalists on the return flight from Dublin, Francis invited them to read the 11-page dossier dropped by the former nuncio to the United States, Carlo Maria Viganò, who asked for the Pope’s resignation, accusing him of having covered up the 83-year-old Cardinal Emeritus of Washington Theodore McCarrick, who had had homosexual relations with adult seminarians and priests. It is therefore necessary to start from a careful reading of the text, analyze it and separate the facts reported from opinions and interpretations. And above all from omissions. 

The anti-Bergoglio operation  

The clamorous decision of the Vatican diplomat to violate the oath of fidelity to the Pope and the official secret represents yet another attack against Francis carried out in an organized way by the same circles that a year ago had tried to arrive at a sort of doctrinal impeachment, after the publication of the exhortation “Amoris laetitiaˮ. Attempt failed. Viganò is in fact one of the signatories of the so-called “Professione” in which Pope Bergoglio is defined as divorce-friendly, and well connected to the most conservative circles overseas and in the Vatican. That it is not simply the outburst of a Church man tired of the rotten things he has seen around him, but of a long and carefully planned operation, in an attempt to get the Pope to resign, is demonstrated by the timing and the involvement of the same international media network that for years has been propagating - often using anonymous ones - the requests of those who would like to overturn the result of the 2013 conclave. This is attested by the same testimonies written in the various blogs by the journalists who published the Viganò dossier: always in the forefront in the defense of the traditional family, but careless to drop the bombshell on the very day in which Francis concluded with a great mass the international meeting of families.  

 

The complaint of 2000  

First of all, assuming that what Viganò said is true, let’s go through the Facts. On 22 November 2000, the Dominican friar Boniface Ramsey wrote to the apostolic nuncio to the USA Gabriel Montalvo and informed him that he had heard rumors over McCarrick having “shared the bed with seminarians”. A day earlier, on 21 November, John Paul II appointed McCarrick Archbishop of Washington. Viganò noted that the nuncio’s claim to the Secretariat of State, then led by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, had no follow-up. It should be noted: the first complaint that arrives in the nunciature and from there to the Vatican is immediately after the appointment in Washington. One may, however, wonder, if these rumors about McCarrick were so widespread and insistent, why wasn’t he prevented from being appointed as auxiliary of New York (in 1977, at the end of the pontificate of Paul VI), then the appointment as bishop of Metuchen (in 1981, at the beginning of the pontificate of John Paul II), then the transfer to the Archdiocese of Newark (in 1986, again with Pope Wojtyla) and finally the promotion to Washington (2000) and to that of becoming Cardinal (2001). 

  

It’s all Sodano’s fault  

The year following his promotion to Washington Wojtyla therefore included McCarrick in the College of Cardinals. In his dossier Viganò blames the nomination - without any evidence – on Sodano explaining that the Pope at the time was already sick and almost incapable of understanding and governing the Church. Anyone who has knowledge of Vatican things knows that this is not true, at least it was not true in the year 2000: John Paul II will live for another five years. We know that at that time, in the narrow wojtylian entourage that controlled the nominations, there were the Pope special secretary, Stanislaw Dziwisz (a name that Viganò omitted) and the Substitute of the Secretariat of State then Prefect of the bishops, Giovanni Battista Re (whom Viganò mentions for clearing his name). Was that first report, without complainants taking responsibility themselves, perhaps not reliable? Or was McCarrick’s power - also financial - able to open Vatican doors that should have remained closed? A doubt can be raised about the appointment to Washington, but why no one think to investigate before he was created cardinal the following year? But why did the nuncio not insist, if he was so sure of the abuses committed against seminarians and priests (always of legal age), asking John Paul II for an audience?  

 

Benedict XVI’s sanctions  

New complaints arrived in 2006, when the Pope was Benedict, and the Secretary of State was Tarcisio Bertone. This time a former priest and abuser of children Gregory Littleton enters the scene, who gives the nuncio to the USA (at that moment Monsignor Pietro Sambi) a memory in which he tells that he too was sexually harassed by McCarrick (always as over-18). Viganò prepared a note for the superiors, who did not respond. It is worth remembering that at that moment McCarrick had already retired: the new Pope Benedict XVI on 16 May 2006 accepted his resignation duly presented the previous year, 7 July 2005, when the prelate turned 75. If the rumors and complaints were so widespread and known, why wasn’t McCarrick dismissed immediately, at the age of 75? In 2008, new accusations on McCarrick’s improper behavior started circulating and again, Viganò writes, he had sent another note to his superiors. This time something seems to have moved, though at the not-so-rapid times of the Vatican bureaucracy. In fact Benedict XVI would have intervened against the cardinal by now emeritus and retired with a sanctioning order. Viganò cannot be precise about the date of this sanction: at that time, he had left his post in the Secretariat of State, where he coordinated the work of the nunciatures staff, and was appointed Secretary of the Governorate. Therefore, if Viganò affirms the truth - and we must assume that he does - “in 2009 or in 2010”, Benedict XVI intervenes and presumably orders McCarrick to retreat from public life to a life of prayer and no longer to live in the neocatechumenal seminary Redemptoris Mater that he opened in Washington.  

 

Mysterious restrictions  

Benedict’s order does not become public and is transmitted orally by the Holy See to the nuncio in Washington (Sambi) so that he may communicate it to the person concerned. Indulgence for a cardinal by now old and retired to whom one wants to spare the shame of the public sanction? Or was the evidence not considered sufficient by Benedict XVI, who, if he is at the origin of the sanction, must obviously have been adequately warned of what McCarrick had committed? Pope Ratzinger therefore knew but thought it was sufficient to recommend to the already retired cardinal that he remain calm on the sidelines. It is worth remembering: no one has ever spoken, let alone denounced, about child abuse. We are talking about harassment of people of full age, which - given that it is the bishop who invites his seminarians or priests to bed, are actually an abuse. There is no such thing as a situation of equality, before it being a sexual abuse, it is an abuse of clerical power. Although no one has ever said that to invite seminarians close to the priesthood and young priests to sleep with him, “Uncle Tedˮ (as McCarrick called himself) used forms of violence or threats. We could ask: but if these serious facts were so evident, why not impose an exemplary and public sanction on the cardinal, asking him to live withdrawn in penance?  

 

Why is nobody watching?  

Some doubt about the real content of the sanctions is more than legitimate, especially in the light of what happens after that. The Viganò dossier suggests that in the last three or four years of Ratzinger’s pontificate McCarrick lived as a hermit or a cloistered monk and that only after the election of Francis was his cage opened. Once again, we must stick to the documented facts, and that is not the case at all. The reality is different, documented and documentable. At everyone’s fingertips, just a click on the web away. During Ratzinger’s last years of pontificate, McCarrick’s did not change his way of life: it is true that he left the seminary where he resided, but he celebrated diaconal and priestly ordinations alongside important cardinals of the Roman Curia close collaborators of Pope Ratzinger, he gave lectures. On 16 January 2012, he participated together with other US bishops in an audience with Benedict XVI in the Vatican and his name among the participants was indicated in the bulletin of the Holy See’s Press Office. On 16 April 2012, he met Benedict again at the audience of the Papal Foundation and celebrated the Pontiff’s birthday together with all those present. He traveled and returned to Rome in February 2013 to bid farewell to the Pope who had resigned and shook his hand with a smile (all immortalized by the cameras of Vatican TV). It is clear that his position was not considered so serious, that the indications of guilt were not considered so obvious and that the sanctions should not be so restrictive.  

 

Also Viganò stood beside McCarrick  

And even Viganò himself, in the meantime removed from the Vatican by decision of Benedict XVI who “promotes him nuncio to Washington, does not appear at all worried about the situation. His participation in public events with the harassing cardinal is documented, such as concelebrations in the United States or the attribution of an award to McCarrick (on 2 May 2012, Pierre Hotel in Manhattan), a ceremony during which Viganò appears anything but indignant or embarrassed to be photographed alongside the old cardinal harasser. Why now that he had the power to reach Benedict XVI directly, as his representative in one of the most important diplomatic seats in the world, does Nuncio Viganò not rise up, not act, not ask for an audience, not enforce the restrictive provisions?  

 

Francis’ involvement   

The current Pope, the only real target of the entire operation, enters the scene in June 2013, a few months after his election. Let’s remember: McCarrick, over eighty, did not take part in the conclave, is a retired but hyperactive cardinal. He continues to travel around the world, to give lectures, to preside over celebrations. Viganò goes to an audience with Francis. It was the Pope who asked him a question about McCarrick and Viganò reminded him that the cardinal “corrupted generations of seminarians and priests” and that in the Vatican there is a dossier that attests to this. Beware: it is not Viganò who speaks in a worried way of the cardinal. It is the Pope who asks for a judgment. The nuncio does not say that he has given Bergoglio a note on the matter nor that he has asked him to intervene. Today, outraged, Viganò writes about the sanctions of Benedict XVI that no one knows, but - if they exist - he as nuncio does not seem to have acted to enforce such measures. That answer is all he says to the Pope.  

 

McCarrick Adviser?  

Viganò then writes that the old cardinal would have become, in the early years of Francis’ pontificate, his counselor, especially for the American appointments. He does not present, at least until this moment, any evidence. Instead he argues - and here too there is no reason not to believe him - that in that first meeting of June 2013 the new Pope would have recommended: “The bishops in the United States must not be ideologized, they must be pastors”. Since in the following months McCarrick also made a similar statement speaking with a monsignor of the nunciature (who then reported it to Viganò), the former nuncio who asked for the Pope’s resignation deduced that there was McCarrick behind Bergoglio’s attitude towards the US Church. A very weak deduction. It is in fact much simpler and more plausible to hypothesize that on his own initiative Francis - who knew the American Church - had repeated to various people that he met that phrase on the bishops that “they must not be ideologized” but must be “pastors”. Moreover, to understand that this is one of the insistent points of his magisterium on the episcopate, it is sufficient to read the Pope’s speeches, who thought that way well before the 2013 conclave.  

 

The denial of the former ambassador  

An interesting confutation of Viganò’s theory came yesterday from the former American ambassador to the Holy See, Miguel Diaz, nominated in May 2009, who said he was stunned to read Viganò’s testimony on Francis’ words on American bishops because “I immediately recalled my fist meeting with Msgr. Sambi (Pope Benedict’s representative) at his residency in Washington DC “ he said that “we needed American bishops who were less political and more pastoral, not cultural war warriors”. Therefore, already under Pope Ratzinger the indication that arrived at the apostolic nuncio to the USA was that of appointing bishop pastors and not “cultural warriors”. Evidently the question of the excessive collateralism of the US episcopate with certain political positions and a certain unilateral interest only in some ethical questions was already felt as problematic at the end of Ratzinger’s pontificate.  

 

The new complaint  

Four and a half years go by and in 2018, for the first time, the news of an abuse on a minor committed fifty years earlier by McCarrick, then a young priest, reaches the Vatican. The complaint had never been made before, nor had anyone - according to Viganò’s report - ever talked before about the possible abuse of minors involving McCarrick. A regular canonical procedure was quickly opened by the diocese of New York, with the transmission of the documents to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. There are also new reports, made known by the diocese of Newark, concerning two settlements with compensation for damages that McCarrick has paid, relating to allegations of harassment made by seminarians of age at the time of the events. With a decision that has no precedent in the recent history of the Church, Francis not only imposes McCarrick to silence and a withdrawn life (that silence and a withdrawn life that had not been imposed on him before or if it had been imposed on him no one had ensured that he complied with this orders) but also removes his cardinal cap. The cardinal emeritus of Washington is no longer cardinal. 

 

Distorted facts and logics  

Not only should we ask ourselves if what Viganò tells is true (as the media repeat like a mantra, asking in a loud voice for Francis’ resignation). One should also wonder whether the sequence described by Viganò, his considerations, his omissions, his interpretations are reasonable and really lead to attributing some responsibility to the reigning Pontiff today. In any case, the pure and crude facts, and assuming that every detail told by the former nuncio is true, here is what happened. There is a holy Pope whose entourage (much less holy) promoted and made cardinal a homosexual bishop who abused his power to sleep with seminarians, even if it is not clear how much information had reach directly the ear of John Paul II, then perfectly capable of understanding and willing, to whom certainly could not pass unnoticed the importance of the appointment of the Archbishop of Washington. There is another Pope who has emerged today, Benedict, who (perhaps) would have ordered this cardinal to live withdrawn but without then being able to enforce his orders, who never flinched not even after seeing him arrive at the Vatican on several occasions, and without his nuncio to the USA (Viganò) having any problem in taking pictures next to him, in concelebrating with him, in having dinner with him, in pronouncing speeches in his presence. And finally, there is a Pope, Francis, who stripped the cardinal - despite being old and retired for some time – from his cardinal status after having reduced him to silence, forbidding him from celebrating in public. And yet it was of the latter’s head that the former nuncio today indignant is asking for, probably only because Francis had “dared” to appoint in the United States some bishop who are less conservative than those previously appointed, when it was cardinals like Bernard Law who advised on the American appointments. That it is a biased operation, it is evident to anyone who reflects on the succession of events, without the need to revisit information that tends to discredit the figure of Viganò. 

 

A shortened version of this article has been published in today’s edition of La Stampa 

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/08/28/vaticaninsider/facts-and-omissions-of-vigans-testimony-against-francis-ojjiYm4VJw2e1ELhURticP/pagina.html

 

The (inaccurate) memories of the former nuncio who wants the head of the Pope

New denials of Viganò’s memorandum that asks for the renunciation of Francis, the Pope who punished Cardinal McCarrick. An analytic chronology of events based on the news that has emerged so far

ANDREA TORNIELLI

Saint John Paul II died in April 2005 and can no longer speak. The Pope Emeritus Benedict, his collaborators explain, has absolutely no intention of saying anything about the whole thing. Pope Francis invited journalists to read what was written by the former nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò in his j’accuse that tries to involve three Popes in the case of the cardinal - serial harasser of seminarians (later discovered also abuser of minors) - Theodore McCarrick. Here is a comprehensive and reasoned chronology of the news that has emerged so far, along with the first denials of Viganò’s manifesto through witness statements and documentary evidence. 

1994  

A priest (presumably Gregory Littleton) writes to the Bishop of Metuchen, Edward Thomas Hughes, speaking of the sexual and psychological abuse that Bishop Theodore Edgar McCarrick (born in 1930, ordained priest in New York in 1958, ordained auxiliary bishop of New York in 1977, moved to Metuchen in 1981, then promoted to Newark in 1986), inflicted on him. He claims that McCarrick left him so traumatized that he himself had harassed by two 15-year-old boys. The priest was removed and reduced to the lay state ten years later, following the entry into force of the new anti-pedophilia rules, based on the admissions contained in that letter.  

 

21 November 2000  

John Paul II appoints Theodore McCarrick Archbishop of Washington. The nuncio to the United States is Gabriel Montalvo, the Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops (who has been in office for a few weeks) is Giovanni Battista Re. According to Viganò’s hypothesis, the Cardinal Secretary of State, Angelo Sodano played an important role in the nomination. Viganò states that Re would have opposed it because McCarrick’s name was only the 14th on the list of candidates. In his statement Viganò does not mention in any way the name of John Paul II’s personal secretary, Bishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, who is very close to Re. Dziwisz is in fact one of the most influential people in Pope Wojtyla’s entourage. From Viganò’s story emerges a deplorable and offensive portrait of the Pontiff now proclaimed saint. The former nuncio in fact recalls that John Paul II was “already very ill” suggesting he was so sick that he was no longer able to take care of the appointments, not even the most important ones, not even those that led - at that time - the sure attribution of the cardinal’s hat and therefore inclusion in a future conclave.  

 

In 2000 Pope Wojtyla had still 5 more years to go. That same year, in addition to presiding over dozens of Jubilee celebrations, he visited Egypt, the Holy Land (Jordan, Israel, Palestinian Territories) and Fatima. A few months before McCarrick’s nomination, in February 2000, Pope Wojtyla nominated the new Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor; then in June 2000, he nominated Edward Michael Egan as Archbishop of New York. At the beginning of the following year, as we shall see, John Paul II created 44 new cardinals in a single consistory. After McCarrick in Washington he nominated - to give some examples limited to some metropolitan seats only- Angelo Scola to the Patriarchate of Venice (January 2002); Philippe Barbarin to archbishop of Lyon (July 2002); Péter Erdo to archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest (December 2002); Tarcisio Bertone in Genoa (December 2002); Diarmuid Martin as coadjutor archbishop of Dublin (May 2003); Gaudencio Rosales as archbishop of Manila (December 2003); Lluís Martinez Sistach as archbishop of Barcelona (June 2004). Karol Wojtyla, despite the slow progress of the disease that was inhibiting his motor skills, is a Pontiff who continues to travel and govern the Church. Anyone who has followed Vatican events knows that attempting to present the Pope - in the year 2000 - as a man incapable of understanding and deciding for himself, is a falsehood.  

 

22 November 2000  

Dominican friar Boniface Ramsey wrote a letter to nuncio Montalvo in which he reported rumors of McCarrick’s improper behavior towards seminarians and said he knew some of these seminarians and priests. Ramsey announces the arrival of the same letter to Montalvo by phone, then changes his mind after a conversation with a friend, and calls the nuncio to tell him he had second thoughts. But during this second conversation - as Ramsey himself tells the National Catholic Register - the nuncio persuaded him to send it anyway. The document probably does not pass through the office of the Delegate for the Pontifical Representations, Carlo Maria Viganò. According to the memorandum, Viganò will have news of this first letter containing accusations only in 2006, by the new nuncio Pietro Sambi. Yet he insists on blaming only Cardinal Sodano who received it in November 2000, without however indicating any evidence:“the office that I held at the time was not informed of any measure taken by the Holy See after those charges were brought by Nuncio Montalvo at the end of 2000, when Cardinal Angelo Sodano was Secretary of State”.  

 

January-February 2001  

Theodore McCarrick takes office as Archbishop of Washington. On 21 February of the same year he received the red hat from John Paul II, in the most crowded Consistory in the history of the Church: 44 new cardinals. Among these there are many Latin Americans and Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself.  

 

2004 –2005  

According to the spokesman for the diocese of Metuchen, Erin Friedlander, in 2004 the first complaint against McCarrick arrived at the diocese. Two more will follow, all relating to events of previous decades. The Archdiocese of Newark and the Dioceses of Metuchen and Trenton are paying settlements to Robert Ciolek, who was harassed by McCarrick, but which also includes another settlement for the abuses that Ciolek had suffered from a teacher while he was a student in a Catholic high school. According to the spokesman for the diocese of Metuchen, the settlement was reported to the nunciature.  

 

April 2005  

McCarrick participated in the pre-Conclave congregations and then in the Conclave that elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger Pope on 19 April of that year.  

 

July 7, 2005  

McCarrick turns 75 and sends - as required at this age - his renunciation to the Holy See. 

 

16 May 2006  

McCarrick’s renunciation was accepted by Benedict XVI, eight months after the canonical age: it was not a long period (metropolitan archbishops with the red hat, if in good health, can remain at least a year - often even two – after turning 75); yet it was not even that short of a period to suggest that Rome wanted to give a punitive signal to the Archbishop of Washington. Instead of McCarrick, Pope Ratzinger appoints Donald Wuerl. McCarrick’s retirement occurs after the first claim for compensation to the Diocese of Newark.  

 

June 2006  

Former priest Gregory Littleton (his name in full had never been made public, it is Viganò who disclosed it for the first time) denounces to the diocese of Metuchen the abuses suffered by McCarrick during his time as bishop there: he will be paid 100,000 dollars in compensation. Also in this case, being a bishop (and later a cardinal), the diocese is obliged to inform the apostolic nunciature in the United States. The spokesperson for the Diocese of Metuchen says today that the report had been duly filed.  

 

December 2006  

Viganò, at that time still Delegate for the Diplomatic Representations in the Secretariat of State, drafted a note on the basis of Littleton’s Memoir of indictment, transmitted to the Secretariat of State by the nuncio Pietro Sambi and delivered to Viganò on 6 December 2006. In transmitting the information, Sambi explained that Littleton “had already forwarded this Memoir to about twenty people, including civil and ecclesiastical judicial authorities, police and lawyers, as early as June 2006, and that it was therefore very likely that the news would soon be made public. He therefore called for a prompt intervention by the Holy See”. According to Viganò’s account that same 6 December he delivered the note to the superiors, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and the substitute Leonardo Sandri, without however receiving any indication on what to do. Viganò makes no mention in his press release of any news on the payment of compensation to McCarrick’s victims.  

 

23 April 2008  

Richard Sipe’s Statement for Pope Benedict XVI about the pattern of sexual abuse crisis in the United States” is put online on the web, which also refers to McCarrick’s improper behavior and abuse of seminarians. On 24 April, the document was sent to Cardinal William Levada (Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith appointed by Benedict XVI as his successor at the head of the former Holy Office). Levada transmits Sipe’s statement to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State, and on 24 May the Sipe’s statement lands on Viganò’s desk, who draws up a new note, delivered on 25 May to the new substitute of the Secretariat of State, Fernando Filoni.  

 

November-December 2008  

The nuncio to the United States Pietro Sambi communicates to Cardinal McCarrick (quite abruptly, according to one testimony) the Pope’s invitation to leave the neocatechumenal seminary Redemptoris Mater where he lived and to reduce his public life. On the nature and scope of these alleged “sanctionsˮ or recommendations, Viganò’s version differs from those of one of Pope Ratzinger’s close collaborator, who today, albeit anonymously, tells the National Catholic Register : “It was a private request”, without a written decree, the cardinal was invited “to keep a low profile”. According to NCR journalist Edward Pentin, the source close to Ratzinger commented on the secrecy and lack of severity of the sanctions, “sometimes it’s better if something is sleeping to let it sleep”.  

 

The date is only presumed and can be hypothesized because of an episode reported by the Catholic News Agency : at the end of 2008, McCarrick was preparing to leave the Redemptoris Mater seminary in Washington and would have moved to the rectory of the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, in the center of the federal capital, at the beginning of 2009. No one is aware of the so-called ”sanctions”. This is how Viganò describes the latter: “I learned with certainty, through Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, then-Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, that Richard Sipe’s courageous and meritorious Statement had had the desired result. Pope Benedict had imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis: the Cardinal was to leave the seminary where he was living, he was forbidden to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance.” 

 

The private recommendation is not communicated to the delegate Viganò. Benedict XVI presumably talks about it with Bertone or with the Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, Giovanni Battista Re. We can’t exclude that the communication to Nuncio Sambi occurred only verbally, during one of the Vatican Diplomat’s trip to Rome. Catholic News Agency confirms that the conversation between Sambi and McCarrick can be traced back to this period: “Two sources present at the 2008 meeting between McCarrick and Sambi told the CNA that the nuncio had ordered McCarrick to leave the seminary at the time. According to these sources, Sambi told McCarrick that his move was Pope Benedict XVI’s direct instruction. Please note the substantial difference with the version of Viganò’s communiqué: according to the former nuncio, the papal instruction was only to leave the seminary, and not, also, to abandon public life and live secluded. The facts so far documented confirm and corroborate what is reported by the source close to Pope Ratzinger and instead raise considerable doubts about Viganò’s words on the nature and weight of the alleged “sanctionsˮ against the elderly cardinal. McCarrick, in fact, apart from changing his residence, does not change his habits nor does he withdraw to a life of penance. If that of Pope Ratzinger was an “orderˮ (as secret as it may be), McCarrick does not obey it. If it was a “recommendation”, he does not accept it. The only thing he does is to leave the seminary. The existence of this “recommendationˮ or “secret instruction” by the Pontiff makes it evident that Benedict XVI had been informed by Bertone of the accusations against McCarrick.  

 

16 July 2009  

Carlo Maria Viganò is nominated by Benedict XVI Secretary of the Governorate of Vatican City.  

 

2009-2010  

According to Viganò, the alleged “sanctionsˮ of Pope Benedict to McCarrick would have been communicated to the person concerned on an unspecified date between 2009 and 2010, “with incredible delay”. In reality, considering the cardinal’s change of residence - i.e. the only documentable act that can be reconnected to the Pontiff’s “recommendationˮ - everything seems to have happened a year earlier. Unless we should assume Sambi intervened not once but twice on McCarrick: the first time, in 2008, with the invitation to leave the seminar. The second time - in 2009/2010 - to induce him to live withdrawn. A hypothetical “sanctionˮ that - if it exists - is absolutely not taken into account by the interested party.  

 

27 July 2011  

The apostolic nuncio to the USA, Pietro Sambi, dies.  

 

2011  

According to the Catholic News Agency, McCarrick left the rectory of the parish where he resided for two years and decided to go and live in a house next to the seminary of the Institute of the Incarnate Word. Here he was regularly assisted at first by young priests and then by seminarians. There are no reports of complaints of misconduct or harassment. But he is considered a heavy presence, for according to some testimonies, McCarrick requires special treatment with regard to food, as well as using the seminarians as drivers for his trips.  

 

October 6, 2011  

The “sanctionedˮ McCarrick is in Rome to participate in the ordination of the new deacons of the North American College, a celebration presided over by the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the American Cardinal William Levada, close collaborator of Pope Ratzinger.  

 

19 October 2011  

Carlo Maria Viganò is nominated apostolic nuncio to the United States by Benedict XVI and removed from the Vatican. In the months before, the archbishop had opposed Cardinal Bertone for events within the Governorate and for having accused some prelates of financial mismanagement, and also of immorality.  

 

October 2011  

In his statement Viganò writes that before leaving Rome he had received verbal news from Cardinal Marc Ouellet (Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops) of “Pope Benedict’s measures” against McCarrick. We recall that according to Viganò these measures provide that the cardinal abuser of seminarians withdraws to a life of prayer and penance. “In turn – Viganò writes in his memorandum - I repeated them to Cardinal McCarrick at my first meeting with him at the Nunciature. 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”.  

 

 

 

 

16 January 2012  

Even after receiving Viganò’s new message restating the papal recommendations, McCarrick shows he does not take them into consideration at all. The cardinal in fact participates in the audience for the ad limina visit of the American bishops and on that occasion, greets Benedict XVI twice.  

 

January-October 2012  

On 27 January, the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano published a first confidential letter from Viganò to Bertone in which the prelate recounted the existence of a plot against him to put him in a bad light. It’s the beginning of the first Vatileaks. Viganò’s letters, together with the documents stolen by chamber helper Paolo Gabriele, are the basis for a tv show conducted by journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, who publishes a book in which Viganò and his work at the Governorate is much cited.  

 

16 April 2012  

McCarrick - who according to Viganò’s communiqué at this time was subject to Benedict XVI’s “sanctionsˮ - returns a second time to Rome, to participate in an audience granted by the Pontiff to the Papal Foundation. It is a foundation in which McCarrick has been personally involved for many years, and which has paid huge sums for the Pope’s charity. That day is Joseph Ratzinger’s birthday, and he is given a cake. This is the second time in a few months that the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington finds himself before Benedict XVI. It does not appear that Viganò was invited to give McCarrick any new message, reminding him of the Pontiff’s “instructions” and the alleged “restrictions”.  

 

 

 

 

May 2, 2012  

Carlo Maria Viganò participates in New York, at a hotel in Manhattan, at the award ceremony of the “Ambassadors of the Pontifical Missions”. It’s a gala that features the alleged “sanctionedˮ McCarrick. Viganò greeted him with affection and told him: “You are so much loved by us all”.  

 

28 February 2013  

McCarrick returns to the Vatican to participate in the last audience of Pope Benedict XVI, who had resigned, and during which he greeted one by one all the cardinals present. The meeting is cordial, as it is with everyone else.  

 

3 March 2013  

Cardinal Archbishop Keith O’Brien of Edinburgh announces that he will not participate in the next Conclave and admits the accusations levelled against him stating: “my sexual conduct is substandard”. He too was accused of having had sexual relations with seminarians and priests. On February 18, Benedict XVI had accepted his renunciation of the leadership of the diocese even though there were still 27 days left before the Cardinal’s 75th birthday. (On 20 March 2015, it was announced that Pope Francis had accepted O’Brien’s renunciation of the rights and prerogatives of the cardinal, while maintaining the honorary title of cardinal).  

 

March 2013  

Pre-Conclave congregations are held. McCarrick, whose list of complaints is more substantial than that against O’Brien, participates to them. But since he was already over 80 years old he did not enter the Conclave and therefore did not take part in the votes that led to the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio on the evening of March 13. In the handover between Benedict XVI and Francis it is highly probable that no mention is made of the McCarrick affair. And that this issue was probably not even raised in the first audiences with the Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops. Certainly, the nuncio to the United States Viganò does not receive instructions about the presumed “sanctionsˮ established by Benedict XVI and which were never enforced. Nobody from Rome invites him to repeat them. No one in Rome tells him that they have ceased to exist. For everyone else, simply, those papal instructions never existed as McCarrick continued to lead his life as before.  

 

Yet Viganò himself writes in his statement: “It was then clear that from the time of Pope Francis’s election, McCarrick, now free from all constraints, had felt free to travel continuously, to give lectures and interviews”. A statement that has been denied by audio-video documents and dozens of articles. So much so that the former nuncio had to take a step back and deny his own words acknowledging, in an interview with the ultraconservative site LifeSiteNews , that in fact McCarrick had never obeyed the indications of Benedict XVI. To justify his attitude of esteem and public friendship towards the cardinal harasser, Viganò put forward reasonable diplomatic etiquette: since the papal instructions were secret, he certainly could not publicly reproach an elderly cardinal, who was already retired (another reason that, according to Viganò’s new version, would have watered down the “sanctionsˮ).  

 

Viganò also justifies - in the same way – McCarrick’s multiple audiences with the Pope after the decision of the alleged “sanctionsˮ, recalling the well-known “mild” character of Benedict XVI. This, however, proves the falsity of Viganò claiming that sanctioned-and-withdrawn-in-prayer-McCarrick would have felt “freeˮ after Pope Francis’ election. No, McCarrick always felt free. And the alleged “sanctionsˮ, according to an anonymous source close to Benedict XVI quoted by National Catholic Register journalist Edward Pentin, were only a “private request,” without any written decree.  

 

10 May 2013  

Viganò and McCarrick participate in a solemn mass and a charity dinner organized by the Catholic University of Washington. In the ritual photo at the end of mass the nuncio is seated right next to McCarrick.  

 

 

 

 

21 June 2013  

At the end of the audience of Pope Francis with the apostolic nuncios, Carlo Maria Viganò has for the first time the opportunity to greet for a few moments the new Pope. Here is the story as it reads in his statement: “ When it was my turn, I just had time to say to him, “I am the Nuncio to the United States.” He immediately assailed me with a tone of reproach, using these words: “The Bishops in the United States must not be ideologized! They must be shepherds!” Of course I was not in a position to ask for explanations about the meaning of his words and the aggressive way in which he had upbraided me”. This statement of the nuncio is however contradicted by the facts and recorded images. It had immediately appeared strange, in fact, that in the very first greeting with the new Pope, he would publicly apostrophize in “an aggressive way” prelates he did not know.  

 

The video of the Vatican Television Center shows that, after a few years, Viganò’s memories are rather blurred. The Pope in fact welcomed him smiling, with kindness, and as soon as he knew that he was the nuncio to the United States, he did not “assail” him “with a tone of reproach”, but rather thanked him amiably for his work. Then, immediately afterwards, the face of the Pontiff becomes a little more serious - as happens every time in these circumstances he wishes to communicate a message that he considers important, as those who follow the videos of this type of audience for work well know - and begins with a very quiet voice, with no trace of an aggressive tone, to say: “In the United States ...”. Immediately after the video stops: the Vatican TV does not disclose the private words exchanged on occasions like these. But it is clear that Francis is not aggressive, does not attack Viganò, does not reproach him at all.  

 

23 June 2013  

Viganò obtained a private audience of about 40 minutes with the new Pope. The former nuncio does not say that it was he who introduced the McCarrick argument - finally demonstrating that concern - he had never manifested up to that moment. It was Francis, who asked him a question about the former archbishop of Washington. On this occasion, we can only rely on Viganò’s memories, who would have said to the Pontiff: “Holy Father, I don’t know if you know Card. McCarrick, but if he asks the Congregation for the Bishops there is a dossier this thick about him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance”. The nuncio does not produce documents, he does not give notes to the new Pope. He doesn’t speak first about McCarrick, who has been retired for years. He limits himself to telling him that there is a dossier against him in the Congregation of the Bishops and that Pope Ratzinger would have “impose” on him a life of prayer and penance. Viganò does not say having added anything about McCarrick not obeying and that Benedict never intervened afterwards to get himself obeyed.  

 

Francis did not react, nothing, but neither did he decide to modify any “secret” decisions of his predecessor, of which up to that moment probably no one had ever spoken to him. Nor did he tell the nuncio that he intended to formally remove those presumed “restrictions”. According to Viganò, during the audience Francis asked him for a change of line with respect to the last episcopal nominations: it was necessary to designate – in short - bishop pastors, and not cultural warriors politicized to the right. The former nuncio affirms without any evidence that this idea would have been suggested to the Pontiff by McCarrick himself. In reality Bergoglio has been thinking like this for several years.  

 

Viganò also received a further denial on this precise point from the former US ambassador to the Holy See, Miguel Diaz, appointed in May 2009, who in a written and signed declaration said he was surprised to have read Viganò’s statements about Francis’ words on the American bishops: “It was stunning to read this reaction from Viganò because I immediately recalled my fist meeting with Msgr. Sambi (Pope Benedict’s representative) at his residency in DC, in which Sambi expressed to me almost the same message using similar words… he said that we needed American bishops who were less political and more pastoral, not cultural war warriors”. Therefore, according to this testimony, already in Pope Ratzinger’s last years, the indications given to the apostolic nuncio to the United States were that of appointing pastor-bishops. Evidently the question of the excessive collateralism of the North American episcopate with regard to certain political positions and a certain unilateral interest only in some ethical questions was already felt to be problematic.  

 

10 October 2013  

Carlo Maria Viganò obtains a second audience with Pope Francis. The former nuncio says little about the meeting and the topics discussed in the press release, except that one of the topics was Cardinal Donald Wuerl, nominated Archbishop of Washington in 2006 by Benedict XVI. Viganò does not say having alerted the Pontiff on the McCarrick question.  

 

April 2014  

Before McCarrick’s new international visit, Viganò stated in his memorandum that he had written to the Secretary of State Pietro Parolin to ask if the alleged “sanctionsˮ imposed by Pope Benedict were still valid. The former nuncio states that he received no reply.  

 

22 September-28 September 2015  

The Pope visits the United States, the cities of Washington, New York and Philadelphia. In Washington, he resides with the Apostolic Nunciature headed by Viganò. In the North American federal capital, Francis visits the House of the Little Sisters of the Poor, known throughout the United States for initiating a legal action against President Barack Obama’s “Obamacare”, the health care reform that obliges them to provide services contrary to Catholic teachings. One of Pope Francis’ gesture of attention and closeness to those who fight for the right to freedom of conscience. The Little Sisters of the Poor and their battle are known. But they have not turned into a political symbol and do not take part in rallies. Yet Viganò asks Francis to meet in private with Kim Davis, head of the Ashland registry office in Kentucky, who ended up in prison for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses and also for preventing her subordinates from doing so. Davis, a member of the “Solid Rock” Evangelical Congregation, became a political symbol and paraded alongside several Republican candidates. Both the president of the US Bishops’ Conference, Joseph Kurtz, and the cardinal archbishop of Washington, disagree with the initiative. But the nuncio proceeds and introduces her to the Pope’s collaborators. Francis greets Kim Davis and the media spread the news of the meeting, filled -yet again - with the usual political polarizations.  

 

9 October 2015  

New private audience of Viganò with Pope Francis. The nuncio - in a new communiqué circulated through his journalist friends - affirms that he has been urgently called back to Rome after the raging political polemics in the United States for the Kim Davis audience. But he says that during the meeting, Bergoglio would have just thanked him for the organization of the papal visit. And he confirms that the Pontiff would have been perfectly informed about who Kim Davis was. Again, Viganò is being denied. His reconstruction was in fact questioned by two witnesses, Father Thomas Rosica and Father Federico Lombardi, the latter at that moment still director of the Vatican Press Office. Both of them testified in writing that the day after the papal audience, Viganò had met them both in his apartment in the Vatican. And he had declared to them: “The Holy Father in his paternal benevolence thanked me for his visit to the United States but told me that I tricked him into presenting this lady to him in the nunciature”. Leaving it to be understood that there is an obvious lack of information about the case along with the Pope’s discomfort for not having been adequately informed by the Apostolic Nuncio. Viganò does not tell us whether during the many meetings he had with the Pope during his stay in the United States or during the audience on the following 9 October, the McCarrick case was discussed again. Everything suggests that this did not happen, because if it had happened the former nuncio would have spoken of it in the communiqué(unless his intentions are to slowly leak ticking time-indiscretions).  

 

April 12, 2016  

The Pope accepts Viganò’s resignation as nuncio to the United States. He has reached the canonical age of 75 for two months (even though the apostolic nuncios can already retire at the age of 70).  

 

2017  

In the first months of the year, McCarrick left the house near the seminary of the Incarnate Word, according to the archdiocese for health problems, and moved into a nursing home run by nuns.  

 

20 June 2018  

Three press releases were published in the United States. The first is signed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, who informs of a complaint for child abuse against McCarrick at the time when he was a priest in the Big Apple. “This was the first such report of a violation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People ever made against him of which the archdiocese was aware.” the cardinal points out. According to our public protocol, the results of the investigation were then given to the Archdiocesan Review Board, a seasoned group of professionals including jurists, law enforcement experts, parents, psychologists, a priest, and a religious sister. The review board found the allegations credible and substantiated”. At the same time, Cardinal Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, states: “ This Archdiocese and the Diocese of Metuchen received three allegations of sexual misconduct with adults decades ago; two of these allegations resulted in settlements”. Finally, McCarrick also published a statement saying that he did not remember abusing a minor. The cardinal is suspended from any public ministry.  

 

28 July 2018  

Pope Francis accepts McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals and orders him a life of penance and prayer. The archbishop emeritus of Washington is no longer a cardinal. “Pope Francis - the Vatican communiqué reads - accepted his resignation as cardinal and ordered his suspension from the exercise of any public ministry, along with the obligation to remain in a house yet to be indicted to him, for a life of prayer and penance, until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial”.  

 

June-August 2018  

The former nuncio Viganò makes contact with the Vatican experts Aldo Maria Valli (he himself reveals it) and Marco Tosatti. The latter tells us that he also collaborated in the drafting and editing of Viganò’s text. Timothy Busch, a conservative lawyer, one of the administrators of the Eternal Word Television Network (Ewtn), who received Viganò’s press release, also claims a role in the operation. Busch tells the New York Times that “those responsible for the publication had personally assured him: the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, confirmed Archbishop Viganò’s story”. A news that is denied by Ratzinger’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who branded it as “fake news!”  

 

26 August 2018  

Viganò’s memorandum, an 11-page document that accuses Francis of having covered up the cardinal abuser McCarrick and goes as far as to ask for his resignation, is published jointly by a network of American and Italian media. Viganò implicates John Paul II’s entire entourage (except for his personal secretary, Stanislaus Dziwisz), but as we have seen, he seeks en passant to “saveˮ Wojtyla describing him as an old man incapable of understanding and of wanting, unloading all the blame on Sodano. He also implicates Benedict XVI’s entire entourage, again trying to “saveˮ Ratzinger because he - having learned of the case - would have punished McCarrick, albeit belatedly and mildly, for Bertone’s fault. As has been documented, Viganò in all probability exaggerates the scope of these “measures” imposed by Benedict and never enforced by anyone, in primis by the apostolic nuncio to the United States, Viganò himself.  

 

Finally, the former nuncio accuses the entire entourage of Francis: the present Pontiff, the only Pope who has heavily sanctioned McCarrick, appears to be the true objective of the sensationalistic communiqué. The text cites a total of 38 bishops, archbishops and cardinals. Of all these only one - the current secretary of the Congregation of Bishops - obtained the episcopal nomination during the pontificate of Pope Francis. All the others became bishops during the pontificates of Paul VI (only 3), John Paul II and Benedict XVI. This means that for almost all cases, candidates were examined during the necessary process for the first nomination as bishop, during the pontificates of Wojtyla and Ratzinger. Moreover, the great majority of the cardinals cited by Viganò (in all 16) received the red hat either from Wojtyla or from Ratzinger. Finally, the three cardinals targeted by the former nuncio because “guilty of being a little less conservative than their predecessors - Kevin Farrell (cardinal, prefect of the Dicastery for the laity and the family), Blase Cupich (cardinal archbishop of Chicago), William Tobin (cardinal archbishop of Newark) - all became bishops or archbishops with nomination decrees signed by Saint John Paul II or Benedict XVI. During the press conference on the plane that took him back to Rome from Dublin, Francis, when asked about the Viganò accusations, replied to the journalists: “I believe that the Viganò communiqué speaks for itself, and you have the professional maturity to draw conclusions”.  

 

26-27-28 August 2018  

Some American bishops (24 in all), starting with the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, publish declarations - in some cases, even with the order to read them in the churches - to attest the credibility of Viganò. They asked for an inquiry into his communiqué without commenting on the astonishing request for resignation made by the former nuncio. Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke also spoke immediately in support of Viganò.  

 

1 September 2018  

Benjamin Harnwell, former English politician and chairman of the foundation board of “Dignitatis Humanae Instituteˮ”, defends Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, accused by Viganò of belonging “to the current homosexual lobby favorable to subvert the Catholic doctrine on homosexuality”. According to Harnwell, these are absurd statements for a cardinal like Martino who represents “one of the undisputed pro-life titans of the Catholic Church in the last quarter of a century”. Harnwell demands Viganò’s public apologies for the accusation that, “until no evidence to the contrary is presented”, it should be considered “as a stain on an 85-year-old innocent man”.  

 

September 3, 2018  

In a recent homely in Casa Santa Marta, Francis states that in the face of those who “seek only scandal” and “division” the only answer is silence and prayer. Father Federico Lombardi, already Vatican spokesman, interviewed by TV2000, defines the Pope’s homily as “a reflection that we can spontaneously connect to today’s situation in which we have a wave of extremely aggressive accusations that mix some elements of truth with many elements of falsehood that confuse and above all tend to create a situation of division in the Church”. “Faced with this situation - adds Lombardi - the Pope reiterates his intention not to respond directly to these accusations and not to get involved in a terrible spiral of disputes, violent contradictions that can only lead to further divisions and a deep evil in the Church. The Pope chooses to imitate the attitude of Jesus who places himself at a higher level of patience, humility and does not allow himself to be involved in the extremely low and bad level of accusations and counter-attacks”.  

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/09/05/vaticaninsider/the-inaccurate-memories-of-the-former-nuncio-who-wants-the-head-of-the-pope-bv1TkAaslmv3UG5yKLY7ZL/pagina.html

 

 

The dossier against the Pope and the crisis of the American Church

Some U.S. bishops express solidarity with former nuncio Viganò who asked for Francis’ resignation. Gänswein denies that Benedict XVI has confirmed the memorandum

ANDREA TORNIELLI

"Those who conceived and managed this operation with the intention to force Francis down the throne of Peter did not realize that such an attack would have involved his two predecessors”. Massimo Faggioli, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University in Philadelphia, explains what happened last weekend, i.e. the unanimous publication by the anti-papal media network of the report written by the former nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò. A document that concludes with the resounding request for the resignation of the current Pontiff for having "covered upˮ Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, harasser of young adult priests and seminarians, reduced to silence and expelled from the College of Cardinals by Francis himself last July, following a credible child abuse accusation. "The request for resignation - Faggioli explains- shows the state of a certain opposition against Francis, in particular in the United States: the most conservative fringe appears so desperate as to accept the risk of damaging the memory of John Paul II and above all of involving Benedict XVI". 

Viganò and the role of Ratzinger  

  

Viganò states in fact that in 2009 or 2010 Benedict XVI would have secretly sanctioned McCarrick. If the former nuncio reports the truth, Pope Ratzinger would have learned of the accusations against the now retired cardinal and would have decided to sanction him but without giving notice of these sanctions or restrictions. The facts show however that McCarrick, in spite of the alleged sanction, did not live withdrawn and for three times in thirteen months went to Rome, to the Vatican, meeting the Pontiff who would have sanctioned him. The meetings - documented also in the Vatican bulletins - took place in January and April 2012 and then in February 2013. If Benedict knew and had sanctioned the American cardinal, the information he had received might not have been so evident, well-founded and serious as to provide, instead, for a public sanction. And on several occasions Viganò himself, as nuncio to the USA, showed himself smiling alongside the alleged "abuser and sanctioned McCarrickˮ, without showing concern or giving signs of indignation as he does today instead by asking for the renunciation of the first Pope who severely punished McCarrick.  

  

  Gänswein denies  

  

The media network - with its Italian and American branches - that collaborated with Viganò in the drafting of the document, and pushed him to publish his accusations during Francis' journey to Ireland, also sought the sponsorship of Benedict XVI. Timothy Busch, a conservative lawyer and one of the administrators of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), who two weeks ago received the Viganò dossier together with other journalists and representatives of the conservative Catholic world, told the New York Times about this. Busch told the American newspaper that "the people responsible for the publication had personally assured him that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, confirmed Archbishop Viganò’s story. Yet Joseph Ratzinger’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein denies it stating to the press: "I affirm this forcefully: it is a fake-news, a lie", adding that the Pope Emeritus has not commented on the memorandum nor will he do so.  

  

  American Earthquake  

  

Meanwhile, the Church in the United States is in turmoil. Cardinal Daniel Di Nardo, president of the Episcopal Conference, hopes that the questions raised in the report will be answered and reiterates his request for an apostolic visit to the American Church. There are also various attestations of esteem for Viganò in some cases together with the request for investigations into the report. Curiously, there is a fringe of American pastors who, in the face of such a frontal attack, which took place on the day when Francis celebrated World Family Day, do not believe the need to show in any way their closeness to the Pope, but have instead expressed immediate solidarity with his accuser who is asking for his resignation. The Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, declared that he "is not aware" of elements that would allow him to comment on the truthfulness of the former nuncio’s accusations, but wants us to know he positively judges his work as apostolic nuncio, "characterized by integrity towards the Church". The Bishop of Madison, Robert Morlino, expressed his disappointment at the Pope's decision not to respond, and scepticism in the ability of the media to analyze with "professional maturity" the report. He, too, wanted to make known his personal esteem for Viganò by defining the accusations as “real and concrete” and stating the need for an investigation. Thomas Olmsted, Bishop of Phoenix, said he has no direct knowledge of the facts but describes Viganò as a trustworthy person and asks for his accusations to be investigated. The same has been invoked by the bishop of the Texan city of Tyler, Joseph Strickland, who speaking "as pastor" to the faithful, said he considered the accusations credible and has ordered his priests to include this statement of his in the Sunday celebrations and to publish it in the sites and social profiles of the parishes.  

  

  "Para-scismatic mindset"  

  

"Some American bishops - Professor Faggioli affirms - seem to have a para-scismatic mentality. For them the Pope does not exist. They are so under pressure from lay people and their priests for the scandal of abuse that they are afraid to be attacked on the streets. Thus - the scholar continues - they now pass on all responsibility to the Vatican to present themselves as those who ask for justice and truth. They support Viganò's request hoping it will harm Francis without realizing that it will harm John Paul II and Benedict XVI more".  

 

This article was published in today's edition of La Stampa
 

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/08/29/vaticaninsider/the-dossier-against-the-pope-and-the-crisis-of-the-american-church-aJqqdAZpyk9J5PftkzvVQL/pagina.html

 

Viganò to the sanctioned McCarrick: “very much loved from us all…”

The videos that disproof the former nuncio: in 2012, he publicly congratulates the cardinal abuser who according to Ratzinger’s orders should have lived withdrawn from public life

ANDREA TORNIELLI

As apostolic nuncio to the United States, Carlo Maria Viganò not only concelebrated publicly - and without flinching - alongside the abusing Cardinal Theodor McCarrick, but also took part in gala dinners in his honor, despite the alleged harsh sanctions that Benedict XVI would have imposed on the cardinal.  

As the hours go by, not only the interpretation of the facts, but also some of the (alleged) facts recounted by Viganò in his sensationalistic memorandum along with his request for Francis’ resignation proved to be poorly corresponding to reality. In his 11-page- statement, the former nuncio writes: “Pope Benedict had imposed on Card. McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis: the cardinal was to leave the seminary in which he lived, he was forbidden to celebrate in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance”.  

 

“What is certain is that Pope Benedict imposed the above canonical sanctions on McCarrick and that they were communicated to him by the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Pietro Sambi... Pope Benedict’s same dispositions were then also communicated to me by the new Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, in November 2011, in a conversation before my departure for Washington, and were included among the instructions of the same Congregation to the new Nuncio. In turn, I repeated them to Cardinal McCarrick at my first meeting with him at the Nunciature. 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”. 

 

How can these statement match with the fact that McCarrick not only did not change his life, continued to travel, celebrate and give lectures, but also made three trips to the Vatican and was able to greet a smiling Pope Benedict? How can it all match with the fact that Viganò himself, who today claims having reiterated these strict papal instructions to the harassing cardinal, then had no problem in appearing publicly next to him, celebrating mass and being photographed with him and even giving a speech at a gala dinner during which McCarrick received a prize? It happened on 2 May 2012, during Ratzinger’s pontificate, at the World Mission Dinner of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, which was held in a hotel in Manhattan. Only six months had passed since Viganò had received from Cardinal Ouellet the reiteration of the order of sanctions against the cardinal harasser.  

 

Here is the beginning of the speech of the nuncio, put online by the Catholic News Service: “Distinguished guests, bishops here present, and guests being honored this evening as “Pontifical Ambassadors for Missions”, which is a nice title. First of all, His Eminence Cardinal Theodore McCarrick - “he is an ambassador” for quite some time already, as a priest, a bishop, as archbishop and cardinal and very much loved from us all…”. 

 

 

Abp Carlo Maria Vigano at a gala honoring then-Cardinal McCarrick in May 2012, six months after the archbishop now says he was given instructions about Pope Benedict's supposed sanctioning of McCarrick.

Therefore, the nuncio has no problem in being seen next to the cardinal harasser and does not care about the blatant violation of Benedict’s order that he himself assures us of having immediately given to McCarrick. He spoke with affection about the “disobedient “cardinal, who is “very much loved from us all…”. One may say: those orders were secret, in public you need to hold a diplomatically smile. But if Benedict XVI knew of the accusations and his Cardinal Prefect of the bishops informed the nuncio of the reiterated sanction, why did his nuncio do nothing?  

 

It does not seem - at least as far as it is known at the moment - that an indignant Viganò has written to the Vatican angry and astonished at the carelessness with which the old cardinal ignored his orders. And if he did, he obviously received no answer. After all, if the Pope was seen publicly - and with a smile on his lips- next to McCarrick, why should the nuncio have been concerned? Who, among other things, being a long-standing and cautious diplomat, he could have invented whatever excuse like a sudden commitment or an equally unexpected cold, and thus avoid travelling from Washington to New York to pay homage to the cardinal abuser.  

 

But he didn’t. The cases are two: either Benedict XVI’s (alleged) orders were not so peremptory and were only verbal recommendations, but then it is not clear why Viganò is so angry at Pope Francis for having received McCarrick and for not having imposed sanctions which his predecessor had never enforced. Or Viganò was being negligent - or at least not very diligent - in enforcing them when he was the Pope’s representative in the United States, without worrying that those orders were systematically and blatantly ignored.  

 

There is another eloquent video, this time from the archives of the Vatican media, which questions the story of Viganò and above all the interpretation that the former nuncio gives to it. The video shows the brief first meeting between Viganò himself and Pope Francis, during the “hand-kissingˮ at the end of the nuncios meeting.  

 

Let’s see Viganò’s version first - which in this case perhaps should have deserved a better editing - “ When it was my turn, I just had time to say to him, “I am the Nuncio to the United States.” He immediately assailed me with a tone of reproach, using these words: “The Bishops in the United States must not be ideologized! They must be shepherds!” Of course I was not in a position to ask for explanations about the meaning of his words and the aggressive way in which he had upbraided me.  

 

Now let’s see what really happened, thanks to the sequence captured by the cameraman of the then Vatican Television Centre (see minute 1.10).  

Here is the Vatican television footage of mtg with that Abp Vigano talks about in his "testimony"https://youtu.be/bywCzrlxsK0 

As is well documented and undeniable, the reality of the facts is much different from how Viganò told it. First of all, the Pope welcomed him smiling, with kindness, and as soon as he knew that he was the nuncio to the United States, he did not “assail” him “with a tone of reproach”, but rather thanked him lovingly for his work. Then, immediately afterwards, the face of the Pontiff becomes a little more serious - as happens every time - in these circumstances - he wishes to communicate a message that he considers important, as those who follow these kinds of videos for a job well know - and immediately starts saying with a very quiet voice, and with no aggressive tone to say: “In the United States ...”. Immediately after the video stops: the Vatican TV does not divulge the private words exchanged on occasions like these.  

 

But it is clear that Francis is not being aggressive, does not attack Viganò, does not reproach him at all. It was simply the new Pope informing his ambassador to the United States of his concern.  

 

One can say that these are just small details. True. But they are details that document perhaps an imperfect memory of some episodes or a certain personal bitterness of the former nuncio towards the current Pontiff.  

 

Read also - Facts and omissions of Viganò’s testimony against Francis  

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/08/30/vaticaninsider/vigan-to-the-sanctioned-mccarrick-very-much-loved-from-us-all-cbgfv8dL886Cn2blqvn2MM/pagina.html

 

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McCarrick, Benedict's first request (and not sanction) in 2007

 


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