Priest defends demand for pope to quit
The former Vatican official calling on Pope Francis to resign for allegedly covering up claims of sexual abuse broke his silence on Wednesday to explain why he wrote his incendiary letter.
“I spoke because now corruption has reached the top of the church hierarchy,” Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said in an interview published on the blog of Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli.
The former Vatican ambassador to the United States said he isn’t acting out of revenge or anger and that he is “serene and at peace.”
In an 11-page letter published Sunday, Viganò claimed that Francis and other high-ranking church officials knew Theodore Cardinal McCarrick was a “serial predator” and did nothing to discipline him.
In fact, Viganò, 77, claimed that the pontiff even lifted unannounced sanctions that Pope Benedict XVI had supposedly imposed on McCarrick so that Francis could promote him and make him part of high-profile Vatican events.
“I always thought that the church hierarchy would have been able to find within itself the resources to heal the corruption,” Viganò said.
But he never provided proof of a 2013 conversation in which he claims he told Francis that McCarrick had been accused of sexually abusing lower-ranking seminarians and priests.
US bishops have called for an independent investigation to find out who knew what about McCarrick’s misdeeds and when. Some are also asking to know how McCarrick was able to rise through the ranks — from Bishop of Metuchen, NJ to Archbishop of Newark to Archbishop of Washington, DC — even though it was an open secret that he invited seminarians to his New Jersey beach house and had some sleep with him.
McCarrick, 88, was removed from public ministry by the Holy See in June after the Archdiocese of New York found that he’d sexually abused a 16-year-old altar boy in the 1970s. McCarrick said he had “absolutely no recollection of this reported abuse” and that he is innocent.
Since writing the letter, Viganò said he’s been attacked by people trying to destroy his credibility, but has also received messages from priests thanking him.
Supporters of the pope think the timing of the letter is a deliberate attempt by conservative factions to undermine Francis for reaching out to gay and divorced parishioners.
Francis has previously refused to comment on the letter and didn’t bring it up during his weekly public address on Wednesday.
Instead, he spoke of his weekend visit to Ireland, lamenting how Irish church authorities failed to address claims against predator priests.