The eleven-page document, crafted and published by Viganò with the help of sympathetic Catholic journalists while the pope was in Ireland, is motivated by a personal vendetta and enabled by a serious crisis within U.S. Catholicism.

Those familiar with Viganò's career at the Vatican and in Washington, D.C., were not surprised to see his accusations fall apart upon inspection.

His earlier smear campaign against other members of the Curia, which came to light because of "Vatileaks," had similarly collapsed.

It is worth noting that the first real pushback from the Vatican came on September 2, when officials challenged Viganò's account of how he had arranged the private meeting between the pope and Kim Davis in 2015.

Viganò misled Pope Francis about that stunt, and ignored the advice of Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Archbishop Joseph Edward Kurtz, who had both warned him against it.

There is still much we don't know about how Rome handled information about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, but at least three things are already clear enough.

Bringing down the pope

First, this was not just an ordinary case of some disgruntled cleric complaining about his former boss; this was a retired papal diplomat trying to bring down the pope.

Operation Viganò has failed in its purpose, and one hopes that its failure will give Francis the strength he needs to deal with the American abuse crisis the way he finally dealt with the crisis in Chile.

Vigano backfires

Second, the attempt to turn the anger of American Catholics, anger at the revelations involving former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, toward Pope Francis personally has not only failed but backfired.

It has led, not very surprisingly, to a reconsideration of the role the two previous popes played in keeping McCarrick's misconduct a secret.

Francis is the first pope who not only took public action against McCarrick, but has also "accepted" the resignation of a number of bishops guilty of covering up for sexually abusive priests.

It took less than a week—between August 26 and September 1—for journalists to begin filling in the real picture behind Viganò's "testimony": if a sexual abuser was allowed to become cardinal archbishop of Washington, D.C., it was because of what the whole ecclesiastical system under the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI did and failed to do.

Full picture

Third, it's been clear from the start of this episode that it will take a long time to get to the bottom of what really happened.

It is naïve to imagine that there is just oneMcCarrick dossier locked up in some filing cabinet in the Vatican, or even that everything is on a piece of paper somewhere.

The "bishops' factory" has always been, at least in the second millennium, a mix of bureaucracy, social mobility, and informal networks.

The Vatican has never been a totally bureaucratic system, and not everything is written down. Continue reading

• Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University and contributing writer to Commonweal magazine.
• Image: Ferrara Italy

Vigano alleges Pope Francis knew former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had "corrupted generations of seminarians and priests" but nonetheless decided to lift sanctions.

Sanctions that included "a life of prayer and penance" which had been imposed on the retired D.C. archbishop by Pope Benedict XVI in either 2009 or 2010.

Archbishop Viganò, the papal representative to the United States from 2011 until he was recalled to Rome by Pope Francis in 2016, did not provide documents proving that sanctions were imposed by Benedict.

Nor did he provide evidence that Francis knew about the sanctions or that he lifted them.

During the years that then-Cardinal McCarrick was allegedly sanctioned by Rome, he kept up a public profile that included preaching at high-profile Masses, giving talks and accepting awards.

He testified in front of a Senate subcommittee and appeared in the media.

The cardinal also kept up a famously robust travel schedule, in part because he served on the board of Catholic Relief Services and chaired the board of the charitable arm of the international development nonprofit.

A spokeswoman for C.R.S. told America that then-Cardinal McCarrick traveled on "a couple of dozen trips during that time, including in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America" between 2009 and the end of Pope Benedict's papacy in 2013, adding that C.R.S. was "unaware" of any sanctions.

Archbishop Viganò alleges that after several specific attempts to convince the Vatican that then-Cardinal McCarrick should be sanctioned because of allegations of sexual misconduct with priests and seminarians, prohibitions were handed down in 2009 or 2010.

Those sanctions, he said, required the cardinal to move out of a seminary where he was living and forbade him to celebrate Mass in public, participating in public meetings, giving lectures or traveling.

He was to dedicate "himself to a life of prayer in penance."

Pope Francis removed then-Cardinal McCarrick from ministry in June following substantiated allegations that he had sexually abused a minor decades ago.

Sharon Euart, R.S.M., a canon lawyer and the executive director of the Resource Center for Religious Institutes, said that while she could not comment on the specifics regarding the onetime archbishop of Washington, D.C., a priest or bishop who is punished with sanctions removing him from ministry would be notified in writing.

Sister Euart said that whoever has jurisdiction over the offender would normally be notified of the penalty so that the offender could be monitored.

In the case of then-Cardinal McCarrick, it is not clear who may have been asked to monitor him.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who succeeded Archbishop McCarrick in Washington, has said he was not made aware of any sanctions, a statement challenged by Archbishop Viganò.

"There is certainly expectation that they would abide by the regulations of their particular situation," Sister Euart said, adding that she would find it "unusual" for such penalties to remain secret. Continue reading

• Image: America Magazine

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.

Settling old scores

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.

Pope fires Viganò

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.

Archbishop Viganò complex character

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.

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.

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. Continue reading

• Image: Vox Cantoris

Viganò, the former Vatican ambassador to the United States, claims in the letter that Pope Francis knew that recently resigned Cardinal Theodore McCarrick abused seminarians when he was a bishop in New Jersey but nonetheless didn't punish the cardinal.

The 7,000-word document also accuses about a dozen Vatican cardinals who served in the papacies of John Paul, Benedict and Francis of being part of the coverup.

It might be easy to write Viganò off as a disgruntled employee.

He was denied the job he sought under Pope Benedict XVI — president of the governorate of the Vatican City State — and was sent to the United States as papal nuncio, or representative to the U.S. government and the American church.

In a 2012 memo to Pope Benedict, which was leaked to the media, Viganò complained that he was being exiled because he had made enemies trying to reform Vatican finances.

Nuncio to the United States is no minor job, but the head of the Vatican government normally becomes a cardinal.

Viganò became even more unhappy with his job as nuncio after the election of Pope Francis, who ignored his recommendations in the appointment of bishops.

And although most nuncios to the U.S. later become cardinals, it became clear that he was never going to get a red hat.

It is worth noting that many of the people Viganò accuses are the same people with whom he had conflicts in the Vatican.

Nor is this the first time Viganò has criticized the pope.

He joined Cardinal Raymond Burke and others in criticizing the pope's document on the family, "Amoris Laetitia," because they thought it diverged from orthodoxy.

Disgruntled employee? Yes. But many whistleblowers are disgruntled employees.

What is more damning are questions about Viganò's own record regarding the American sex abuse scandal.

During legal proceedings against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, a 2014 letter from Viganò was uncovered in which he told an auxiliary bishop to limit an investigation against the local archbishop and to destroy evidence.

Viganò was certainly not known for transparency and accountability while he was nuncio from 2011 to 2016, but now he presents himself as a born-again defender of the abused.

In the letter, Viganò goes after many former and current officials in the Vatican, including the three most recent secretaries of state: cardinals Angelo Sodano, Tarcisio Bertone and Pietro Parolin.

Other Vatican cardinals he alleges knew about McCarrick's abuse include William Levada, Giovanni Battista Re, Marc Ouellet, Leonardo Sandri, Fernando Filoni, Angelo Becciu, Giovanni Lajolo and Dominique Mamberti.

Given how the crimes of Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionairies of Christ, were ignored during the papacy of Pope John Paul II, some of what Viganò says sounds possible. But no evidence is presented.

Interestingly, John Paul escapes Viganò's criticism. Viganò implies that McCarrick's appointment to Washington and as a cardinal was the work of Sodano "when John Paul II was already very ill."

Yet McCarrick was appointed archbishop of Washington in 2000, five years before John Paul died.

Was John Paul a puppet during his last five years in office?

And if McCarrick's abuse of seminarians was so widely known in John Paul's curia, it is hard to believe that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger did not know.

Did he tell John Paul?

Viganò claims that Re told him that, sometime between 2009 and 2010, Pope Benedict told McCarrick to stop living at a seminary, saying Mass in public, traveling and lecturing.

But there is no evidence to support the claim that McCarrick was sanctioned by Pope Benedict.

McCarrick continued to celebrate Mass, travel and lecture throughout the papacy of Benedict. And on his many visits to Rome, he stayed at the North American College, the residence for U.S. seminarians. Anyone who thinks Benedict would tolerate such disobedience doesn't know Benedict.

Viganò claims that he told Pope Francis on June 23, 2013: "Holy Father, I don't know if you know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation for 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."

Since Pope Francis allegedly did not listen to him then, Viganò thinks he should resign.

Viganò released his letter as Pope Francis was wrapping up his visit to Ireland. Journalists asked the pope about it during the press conference on the plane headed back to Rome.

"I will not say one word on this," the pope said, according to a New York Times video.

"I think this statement speaks for itself, and you have sufficient journalistic capacity to reach your own conclusions."

"When time will pass and you'll draw the conclusions, maybe I will speak," said Francis.

"But I'd like that you do this job in a professional way."

Of course, many headlines read: "Pope refuses to respond to accusations of coverup."

The pope was correct to encourage journalists to examine the Viganò document to see what is true and what is not.

The press conference was not the place to do a line-by-line critique of the document. Many reporters have in fact examined the document and found its claims wanting.

But what about Viganò's claim that he told the pope about McCarrick?

Since the pope is the only other witness to this encounter, only he can verify or deny what Viganò said, and refusing to answer that question does not enhance his credibility.

The pope's media advisers should have told him so immediately after the press conference and responded to the reporters with a clarification before they filed their stories.

The answer could have been, "No, he did not say that to the pope."

Or, it could have been: "Yes, he did say that to the pope, but there is no record of the alleged sanctions by Benedict.

The pope disregarded the accusations because Viganò had a history of unsubstantiated accusations.

And remember, it was Francis who told McCarrick to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penance and took away his red hat."

Reporters, like most people, like the pope, but they also have a job to do.

The Vatican should not make it difficult.

Just as every diocese in the United States needs to do a full and transparent account of clerical sex abuse and each diocese's response, so too the Vatican must disclose what it knew, when it knew and what it did or did not do.

Nothing less will begin the restoration of credibility to the Catholic Church.

• Thomas J. Reese SJ, is a Senior Analyst at RNS. Previously he was a columnist at the National Catholic Reporter (2015-17) and an associate editor (1978-85) and editor in chief (1998-2005) at America magazine. First Publlished in RNS. Republished with permission.
• Image: RNS

That is, a trafficker in conspiracy theories who mixes fact, fiction and venom to produce something explosive but also suspicious.

When you finish reading this testimony, as at the end of Stone's 1991 movie "JFK," you can only conclude that the product tells us more about the author than it does about the subject.

Vigano is certainly correct that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, longtime Secretary of State to Pope John Paul II, was a patron of disgraced former-cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Stone recognized the assassination happened in Dallas.

But why does Vigno fail to mention the key role played by Cardinal Stanislaus Dsiwisz in protecting McCarrick?

Vigano alleges that Pope Francis lifted sanctions against McCarrick that had been imposed by Pope Benedict.

Indeed, the headline on the Edward Pentin story that broke the news of this testimony reads "Ex-nuncio Accuses Pope Francis of Failing to Act on McCarrick's Abuse."

But, Francis did act.

He is the one who removed McCarrick from ministry in June.

The central focus of this testimony is the claim that Benedict issued sanctions against McCarrick: "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," Vigano writes.

During the Benedict papacy, with my own eyes I witnessed McCarrick celebrate Mass in public, participate in meetings, travel, etc.

More importantly, so did Pope Benedict!

If Benedict imposed these penalties, he certainly did not apply them.

He continued to receive McCarrick with the rest of the Papal Foundation, continued to allow him to celebrate Mass publicly at the Vatican, even concelebrating with Benedict at events like consistories.

But, as Vigano tell is, it is all Pope Francis' fault.

Vigano is more than a little obsessed with homosexuality and names prelates whom he accuses of supporting efforts at "subverting Catholic doctrine on homosexuality."

Filmmaker Stone was obsessed with the grassy knoll.

Back in my seminary days, when one of the seminarians would give evidence of this kind of obsession, making wild claims about homosexuality, its sources and its effects, ignoring the emerging scientific and psychological data, the rest of us would look at each other and someone would say, "I would like to take a look at her dance card."

Something similar is playing out all this summer.

Bishops and archbishops speak about gay people with such hatred, you ask yourself how a minister of the Gospel could speak so nastily about other human beings and then it hits you: They are not speaking about other human beings. and you've got to wonder if what you are watching is self-hatred unfolding.

Unfortunately, Vigano's tissue of misinformation will leave its mark.

In the midst of a feeding frenzy, no one stops to ask basic questions and even journalists can forget to undertake basic tasks like asking for corroboration or looking at the questions a text such as Vigano's poses.

Here are a few of my questions. Continue reading

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