Ex-envoy claims popes covered for D.C. cleric
Archbishop makes the claim but offers no proof.
The former Vatican ambassador, a harsh critic of Francis, says he and Benedict XVI were aware of sex claims against archbishop.
A former Vatican ambassador to the United States has alleged in an 11-page letter that Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis
among other top Catholic — Church officials had — been aware of sexual misconduct allegations against former Washington, D.C., archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick years before he resigned this summer.
The letter from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was recalled from his D.C. post in 2016 amid allegations that he’d become embroiled in the conservative American fight against same-sex marriage, was first reported by the National Catholic Register and LifeSite News, two conservative Catholic sites. The letter offered no proof, and Viganò on Sunday told The Washington Post he wouldn’t comment further.
“Silence and prayer are the only things that are befitting,” he said.
Asked about what had been published under his name in the Catholic outlets, Viganò said, “I confirm that it is my text and that I wrote it.”
The Vatican had no immediate comment. McCarrick’s attorney, Barry Coburn, declined to comment.
The letter was the latest dramatic development stemming from a fresh wave of allegations related to clergy sex abuse and its cover-up. Rumors that had swirled for decades about McCarrick exploded in June when Pope Francis suspended the cardinal. Last month, McCarrick, facing credible allegations of abusing seminarians and minors, became the first U.S. cardinal in history to resign.
Jason Berry, who has written several investigative books about the Vatican, said he believes this is the first time a pope has been accused from within. Berry and his co-author, Gerald Renner, wrote “Vows of Silence” about Catholic cover-ups.
“Our book lays the cover-up question right at (Pope) John Paul II’s doorstep. But from within the Vatican hierarchy, from within the Roman Curia, I don’t think anyone has ever publicly accused a pope of covering up for a sex abuser,” Berry said. “That’s why this is such a big deal.”
Viganò’s letter said that McCarrick had been privately sanctioned under Benedict — though only after years of warnings about his alleged behavior. The warnings that Viganò describes dealt with McCarrick’s alleged behavior toward seminarians and young priests — not toward minors. Viganò wrote that the measures, taken “in 2009 or 2010,” banned McCarrick from traveling, holding Mass, or participating in public meetings.
Yet McCarrick appears to have done essentially the opposite. He regularly appeared as a speaker and celebrant at church functions and represented the church in prominent foreign diplomatic efforts in places like China and Iran. A video from 2013 shows Benedict warmly greeting McCarrick in Rome, at the pope’s resignation (and the subsequent election of the new pope), where McCarrick gave round-the-clock television interviews and stayed at a seminary.
Viganò’s letter also says that in 2013, he met Francis months into his papacy and told him face to face that there was “a dossier this thick” about McCarrick. He says he then told Francis about Benedict’s order that McCarrick remove himself from public life.
“He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance,” Vigano says he told Francis. “The pope did not make the slightest comment about those very grave words of mine and did not show any expression of surprise on his face, as if he had already known the matter for some time, and he immediately changed the subject.”