The Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced this Friday (5) the excommunication of Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, accused of “schism” for his attacks on Pope Francis and for not recognizing his authority.
“His public statements are well known, which result in his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, to communion with the members of the Church and to the legitimacy of the magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council,” the Congregation said in a statement, in which it declared the monsignor guilty of the crime of schism.
Viganò, 83, was appointed archbishop in 1992 by John Paul II and later, among other roles, apostolic nuncio (ambassador) to Nigeria until 1998 and to the United States between 2011 and 2016.
The archbishop had been summoned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on June 28 to respond to the accusation of “schism,” but he refused to appear.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led by Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, met on Thursday (4) to deliberate on the canonical criminal process against him, despite his absence, and finally found him “guilty” of the crime of “schism”, promulgating his excommunication.
In recent years, the archbishop has not hidden his confrontation with Pope Francis and, in 2018, he openly accused him of knowing about sexual abuse perpetrated by American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, whom the pontiff would later expel from the priesthood for his conduct (which he said he had no knowledge of until the scandal broke), and even called for his resignation.
He also called Francis a “heretic,” a “tyrant” and a “servant of Satan,” questioned his election in the 2013 conclave and openly attacked him after the document was published. Fiducia Supplicanswhich allows the spontaneous blessing of people in homosexual unions (but not the unions themselves).
For all this, the Holy See accused him of “schism”, for his “public statements that result in a denial of the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church: the denial of the legitimacy of Pope Francis, the rupture of communion with him and the rejection of the Second Vatican Council”.
On June 28, Viganò explained on the social network X that the opening of this canonical process against him had been informed to him with “a simple email”.
“I assume that the sentence has already been prepared, since this is an extrajudicial process. I consider the accusations against me an honor. I believe that the content of the accusations themselves confirms the thesis that I have been defending,” he declared.
The former nuncio described the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which revolutionized and modernized the Church, as “an ideological, theological, moral and liturgical cancer” and called the “Bergoglian Church” a “metastasis,” referring to the current pope’s surname, Bergoglio.
Viganò’s case has often been compared to another of the few precedents at this level, that of French Archbishop Marcel Francois Lefevure, founder of the Society of Saint Pius X, critic of the Second Vatican Council and excommunicated in 1988 by John Paul II for schismatic acts.
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