The imposition of the maximum penalty under canon law – excommunication – on the 83-year-old Curia Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò was unavoidable. It may even have been desired by the former Vatican ambassador to the USA. In any case, Viganò has done everything he can to provoke his exclusion from the universal Church with his statements and behavior in recent years.
The Vatican’s highest authority on faith explained the verdict in a brief statement that Viganò had made “public statements which show that he refuses to recognize the Pope and submit to him.” Viganò had also renounced communion with the Church and its members and denied the legitimacy and authority of the Second Vatican Council. Viganò had therefore been found “guilty of the crime of division (of the Church).” The verdict could only be overturned by the Apostolic See, i.e. the Pope, the statement said.
Pope could overturn verdict if remorseful
The hearings on the Viganò case at the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith began on June 11th and did not take much time. The verdict was handed down on Thursday. On Friday, the verdict was communicated to the accused of schism (church division), and the same day the Dicastery announced that Viganò had been excommunicated “latae sententiae”. Excommunication “latae sententiae” is a so-called felony punishment imposed for a serious offense. The excommunicated person is not allowed to celebrate Mass or other sacraments, nor may he receive sacraments, exercise any ecclesiastical offices, services or functions, or perform official acts.
Excommunication is not irrevocable. Rather, exclusion from the church is linked to the wish and request that the excommunicated person show remorse, do penance and return to the community of the universal church.
The Vatican’s highest authority on faith explained the verdict in a brief statement that Viganò had made “public statements which show that he refuses to recognize the Pope and submit to him.” Viganò had also renounced communion with the Church and its members and denied the legitimacy and authority of the Second Vatican Council. Viganò had therefore been found “guilty of the crime of division (of the Church).” The verdict could only be overturned by the Apostolic See, i.e. the Pope, the statement said.
Viganò let the ultimatum expire
Viganò had been asked by the Dicastery to testify in the proceedings against him by June 28. Viganò not only missed the ultimatum to personally respond to the allegations before the Dicastery. In a manifesto published on the Internet on June 28 entitled “J’accuse” (I accuse), he reiterated the accusation he had made several times before that Pope Francis was not the legitimate head of the Church and was therefore guilty of dividing the Church. “Before my brothers in the episcopate and the entire Church body, I accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of heresy and schism, and I demand that he be condemned as a heretic and schismatic and removed from the throne that he has occupied unworthily for over eleven years,” the manifesto states.
Viganò always addresses Pope Francis by his civil name, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, rather than by his ecclesiastical title. With the title of his manifesto, Viganò alludes to the French writer Émile Zola, who on January 13, 1898, published his famous open letter in the Paris daily newspaper “L’Aurore,” in which he defended the Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been wrongly convicted of treason due to anti-Semitic prejudices.
Viganò’s own “J’accuse” is a litany of accusations that Viganò – and with him other arch-conservative critics of the Pope – have repeatedly made against Francis. In the manifesto, Viganò accuses Pope Francis, among other things, of having called for vaccination against the coronavirus in general and even imposing compulsory vaccination in the Vatican, of having signed a secret agreement between the Holy See and China in 2018 on the mutual appointment of bishops, thereby submitting to the dictates of the Chinese communists, and of having promoted the division of the Church with the World Synod that he initiated.
While for true Catholics the Church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic,” says Viganò, for Bergoglio it is “synodal, inclusive, eco-sustainable, and immigrant and gay-friendly.” Finally, Viganò also accuses the Pope of clinging to the “climate hoax” as well as “allowing adulterers to receive the sacraments and promoting sodomy.”
Viganò, who was born in 1941 in Varese in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, received the sacrament of priestly ordination in 1968 in the diocese of Pavia. After completing his doctorate in ecclesiastical and state law, he entered the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 1973. His roles have included that of nuncio in Iraq, Great Britain and Nigeria. He also held important posts in the Secretariat of State. In October 2011, Viganò was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to the USA by Pope Benedict XVI, a position he held until his regular retirement in 2016.
After the end of his term in office, Viganò became one of the harshest critics of Pope Francis and the informal spokesman for arch-conservative opponents of Francis. Viganò accused Francis of serious failings in his dealings with the American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was eventually dismissed from the cardinalate and clergy by Francis due to proven serial abuse. Politically, Viganò is considered a supporter of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
