“Never Submissive to Pope Francis” –

The Vatican continues to take a hard line on Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who is officially excommunicated as of today. The prelate was condemned for schism by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith following repeated attacks on Pope Francis, whose authority he does not recognize. “His public statements are well known, which translate into a 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 – the former Holy Office – said in a statement, in which it declared the “monsignor” guilty of the crime of schism.

Viganò, 83, is a representative of the most conservative sector of the Catholic Church, appointed archbishop in 1992 by John Paul II and then, among other roles, apostolic nuncio first to Nigeria until 1998 and then to the United States between 2011 and 2016. On June 28, in X, the archbishop had announced that he had been summoned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to respond to the accusation of “schism”, but he refused to appear. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led by Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, met on July 4 to deliberate the canonical criminal proceedings once morest him, despite his absence, and finally found him “guilty” of the crime of “schism”, promulgating his excommunication. The sentence has already been communicated to Viganò.

In recent years, the archbishop has not hidden his clash with Pope Francis and in 2018 he openly accused him of knowing regarding the sexual abuse of the American cardinal Theodore McCarrick, whom the pontiff would later expel from the priesthood for his conduct, going so far as to ask for his resignation. He also called the Pope a “heretic”, a “tyrant” and a “servant of Satan”, questioned his election in the 2013 conclave and openly attacked him following the publication of the document “Fiducia Supplicans”, which allows the blessing of homosexual couples. For all this, the Holy See accused him of “schism”, for his “public statements that translate into a denial of the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church: the denial of the legitimacy of Pope Francis, the breaking 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 trial once morest him had been notified to him with “a simple email.” “I assume that the sentence is already ready, given that it is an extrajudicial trial. I consider the accusations once morest me an honor. I believe that the very tenor of the accusations confirms the thesis that I defended,” he said. 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,” referring to the Pope’s surname, Bergoglio, a “metastasis.”