Viganò Defies Vatican's Summons On Schism Charge, Contends Francis is Not a Legitimate Pope
Traditionalist Catholics and conservatives distance themselves from the Italian archbishop.
By Gary Gately
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — the former Vatican ambassador to the U.S. who has been accused of schism by the Vatican’s doctrinal office — delivered yet another diatribe denouncing Pope Francis, accusing the pontiff of “heresy and schism” and demanding his removal.
In a rambling, defiant statement, Viganò said he refused to participate in the Vatican trial against him, which could lead to excommunication, because Francis is not a legitimate pope. The deadline for his appearance before the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith expired Friday.
“I have not delivered any statement or document in my defense to the Dicastery, whose authority I do not recognize, nor do I recognize the authority of its Prefect, nor do I recognize the authority of the one who appointed him,” Viganò wrote. “I have no intention of submitting myself to a show trial in which those who are supposed to judge me impartially in order to defend Catholic orthodoxy are at the same time those whom I accuse of heresy, treason, and abuse of power.”
The 83-year-old Italian archbishop accused Francis and the post-Vatican II Holy See of being “enslaved” by the “New World Order” in an “essentially Satanic project” in which the “the work of the Creation of the Father, the Redemption of the Son, and the Sanctification of the Holy Spirit is hated, erased, and counterfeited.”
Referring to Francis as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the pontiff’s name before he took on the name Francis as pope, Viganò wrote: “I accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of heresy and schism, and I ask that he be judged as a heretic and schismatic and removed from the Throne which he has unworthily occupied for over eleven years.”
Viganò faulted Francis for his promotion of COVID vaccines, his limits on traditional Latin Masses and the Vatican’s 2018 agreement with China on the appointment of bishops.
The archbishop’s latest statement follows his June 20 post on his website that included the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith order that he appear for a trial for "public statements that show a denial of points necessary for the preservation of communion with the Catholic Church."
Statements he has made, the dicastery’s June 11 citation said, resulted “in a denial of the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church: denial of the legitimacy of Pope Francis, breaking of communion with him, and rejection of the Vatican Council II.”
Viganò has continually attacked Francis since calling for the resignation of the pontiff in 2018, over what Viganò characterized as a vast Vatican cover-up of allegations against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The archbishop alleged that Pope Francis knew McCarrick had abused seminarians, but lifted penalties Pope Benedict XVI had imposed on McCarrick.
Many of the charges Viganò leveled against the Vatican in its handling of the McCarrick investigation have been discredited.
McCarrick had also been accused of sexually assaulting a boy in the 1970s. A Wisconsin judge suspended charges against McCarrick in January, ruling he was incompetent to stand trial because of dementia.
In the first post, Viganò wrote: “It is no coincidence that the accusation against me concerns the questioning of the legitimacy of Jorge Mario Bergogli and the rejection of Vatican II: the Council represents the ideological, theological, moral and liturgical cancer of which the Bergoglian ‘synodal church’ is necessary metastasis.”
Repeating his oft-stated criticisms of Francis, common among some conservative Catholics, the 83-year-old Italian cleric continued: “Bergoglio promotes uncontrolled immigration and calls for the integration of cultures and religions” and ”supports the LGBTQ+ ideology: Bergoglio authorizes the blessing of homosexual couples and forces the faithful to accept homosexuality, while covering up the scandals of his protégés and promoting them to the highest positions of responsibility.”
The statement also attacked the pope for his commitment to preserving the environment and for criticizing climate change deniers.
Viganò’s increasingly vicious attacks on Francis in recent days have prompted even some traditionalist Catholic groups and high-profile conservatives to distance themselves from him.
They include the Society of St. Pius X, whose founder, the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Viganò invokes in his latest statement.
“His defense is mine; his words are mine; and his arguments are mine,” Viganò wrote.
But the society, founded post-Vatican II in 1970, said in a response it posted online: “The crime of schism [against Viganò] is put forward because of certain public affirmations negating the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church.
"According to him,” the society said, “Pope Francis is not a pope. On this point, neither Archbishop Lefebvre nor the fraternity he founded would agree. Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society he founded have not ventured down that perilous road.”
The conservative Italian newspaper Il Foglio proclaimed in a recent editorial referring to the schism charge against Viganò: “Well Done, Holy Father. Mercy and human patience are all well and good, but in the end there’s a limit. The Church is too serious a thing to allow the diffusion, almost the metastasis, of trash inside herself.”
The Il Foglio editorial noted that since 2018, Viganò has appeared often in videos “with increasingly apocalyptic messages, and with homilies spread by sites and blogs with a similar vision of the world and of the Church.”
And the Catholic online news publication Crux reported that Luigi Bisignani, an influential Italian lobbyist who had had strong ties with to the late Catholic Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, published an essay saying Pope Francis had tolerated “every possible injury and maneuver” from Viganò and that the Vatican’s schism charge was long overdue.
The Vatican did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Viganò, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to the U.S. from 2011-2016, had served as the secretary-general of the Governorate of Vatican City State from 2009 to 2011.
Pope John Paul II consecrated Vigano as a bishop in 1992 and he spent most of his career working in a diplomatic capacity for the Holy See.