God is ever with His Church. Just as God raised up St. Peter Damian, so He has raised up Archbishop Carl Maria Vigano.
Yesterday evening, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former Papal Nuncio to the United States, published an 11 page "Testimony", exposing and denouncing the decadent, corrupt web of evil, led by homosexual, or pro-homosexual churchmen: Parolin, Sodano, Bertone, McCarrick, Wuerl, Cupich, Farrell, Maradiaga, Baldissiri, Cocopalmerio, Paglia... the list goes on and on...and up to the Pope.
Yes, Pope Francis, has committed "evil", has covered up for McCarrick, and he too must "resign", wrote the former Nuncio.
The homosexuals, states the Archbishop have the Church "in a stranglehold".
Pray, dear friends, that Cardinal after Cardinal, bishop after bishop, priest after priest, will join in demanding the Pope resign for the good of the Church.
TESTIMONY
by
His Excellency Carlo
Maria Viganò
Titular Archbishop of
Ulpiana
Apostolic Nuncio
In this tragic moment
for the Church in various parts of the world — the United States, Chile,
Honduras,
Australia, etc. —
bishops have a very grave responsibility. I am thinking in particular of the
United States
of America, where I was
sent as Apostolic Nuncio by Pope Benedict XVI on October 19, 2011, the
memorial feast of the
First North American Martyrs. The Bishops of the United States are called, and
I
with them, to follow
the example of these first martyrs who brought the Gospel to the lands of
America,
to be credible
witnesses of the immeasurable love of Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Bishops and priests,
abusing their authority, have committed horrendous crimes to the detriment of
their
faithful, minors,
innocent victims, and young men eager to offer their lives to the Church, or by
their
silence have not
prevented that such crimes continue to be perpetrated.
To restore the beauty
of holiness to the face of the Bride of Christ, which is terribly disfigured by
so many
abominable crimes, and
if we truly want to free the Church from the fetid swamp into which she has
fallen, we must have
the courage to tear down the culture of secrecy and publicly confess the truths
we
have kept hidden. We
must tear down the conspiracy of silence with which bishops and priests have
protected themselves at
the expense of their faithful, a conspiracy of silence that in the eyes of the
world
risks making the Church
look like a sect, a conspiracy of silence not so dissimilar from the one that
prevails in the mafia.
“Whatever you have said in the dark ... shall be proclaimed from the housetops”
(Lk. 12:3).
I had always believed
and hoped that the hierarchy of the Church could find within itself the
spiritual
resources and strength
to tell the whole truth, to amend and to renew itself. That is why, even though
I
had repeatedly been
asked to do so, I always avoided making statements to the media, even when it
would
have been my right to
do so, in order to defend myself against the calumnies published about me, even
by
high-ranking prelates
of the Roman Curia. But now that the corruption has reached the very top of the
Church’s hierarchy, my conscience
dictates that I reveal those truths regarding the heart-breaking case of
the Archbishop Emeritus
of Washington, D.C., Theodore McCarrick, which I came to know in the course
of the duties entrusted
to me by St. John Paul II, as Delegate for Pontifical Representations, from
1998 to
2009, and by Pope
Benedict XVI, as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America, from October
19,
2011 until end of May
2016.
As Delegate for
Pontifical Representations in the Secretariat of State, my responsibilities
were not limited
to the Apostolic
Nunciatures, but also included the staff of the Roman Curia (hires, promotions,
informational processes
on candidates to the episcopate, etc.) and the examination of delicate cases,
including those
regarding cardinals and bishops, that were entrusted to the Delegate by the
Cardinal
Secretary of State or
by the Substitute of the Secretariat of State.
To dispel suspicions
insinuated in several recent articles, I will immediately say that the
Apostolic
Nuncios in the United States,
Gabriel Montalvo and Pietro Sambi, both prematurely deceased, did not fail
to inform the Holy See
immediately, as soon as they learned of Archbishop McCarrick’s gravely immoral
behavior with
seminarians and priests. Indeed, according to what Nuncio Pietro Sambi wrote,
Father
Boniface Ramsey, O.P.’s
letter, dated November 22, 2000, was written at the request of the late Nuncio
Montalvo. In the
letter, Father Ramsey, who had been a professor at the diocesan seminary in
Newark
from the end of the ’80s
until 1996, affirms that there was a recurring rumor in the seminary that the
Archbishop “shared his
bed with seminarians,” inviting five at a time to spend the weekend with him at
his beach house. And he
added that he knew a certain number of seminarians, some of whom were later
ordained priests for
the Archdiocese of Newark, who had been invited to this beach house and had
shared
a bed with the
Archbishop.
The office that I held
at the time was not informed of any measure taken by the Holy See after those
charges were brought by
Nuncio Montalvo at the end of 2000, when Cardinal Angelo Sodano was
Secretary of State.
Likewise, Nuncio Sambi
transmitted to the Cardinal Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, an Indictment
Memorandum against
McCarrick by the priest Gregory Littleton of the diocese of Charlotte, who was
reduced to the lay
state for a violation of minors, together with two documents from the same
Littleton, in
which he recounted his
tragic story of sexual abuse by the then-Archbishop of Newark and several other
priests and
seminarians. The Nuncio added that Littleton had already forwarded his
Memorandum to
about twenty people,
including civil and ecclesiastical judicial authorities, police and lawyers, in
June
2006, and that it was
therefore very likely that the news would soon be made public. He therefore
called
for a prompt
intervention by the Holy See.
In writing up a memo* on
these documents that were entrusted to me, as Delegate for Pontifical
Representations, on
December 6, 2006, I wrote to my superiors, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and the
Substitute Leonardo
Sandri, that the facts attributed to McCarrick by Littleton were of such
gravity and
vileness as to provoke
bewilderment, a sense of disgust, deep sorrow and bitterness in the reader, and
that
they constituted the
crimes of seducing, requesting depraved acts of seminarians and priests,
repeatedly
and simultaneously with
several people, derision of a young seminarian who tried to resist the
Archbishop’s seductions
in the presence of two other priests, absolution of the accomplices in these
depraved acts,
sacrilegious celebration of the Eucharist with the same priests after
committing such acts.
[* All the memos, letters and other documentation mentioned here are available at the Secretariat of State of the Holy See or at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C]
In my memo, which I
delivered on that same December 6, 2006 to my direct superior, the Substitute
Leonardo Sandri, I
proposed the following considerations and course of action to my superiors:
Given that it seemed a
new scandal of particular gravity, as it regarded a cardinal, was going to be
added to the many
scandals for the Church in the United States, and that, since this matter had
to do with a cardinal, and according to can. 1405 § 1, No. 2°, “ipsius Romani
Pontificis dumtaxat ius est iudicandi”;
I proposed that an
exemplary measure be taken against the Cardinal that could have a medicinal
function, to prevent
future abuses against innocent victims and alleviate the very serious scandal
for the
faithful, who despite
everything continued to love and believe in the Church.
I added that it would
be salutary if, for once, ecclesiastical authority would intervene before the
civil
authorities and, if
possible, before the scandal had broken out in the press. This could have
restored some
dignity to a Church so
sorely tried and humiliated by so many abominable acts on the part of some
pastors. If this were
done, the civil authority would no longer have to judge a cardinal, but a
pastor with
whom the Church had
already taken appropriate measures to prevent the cardinal from abusing his
authority and
continuing to destroy innocent victims.
My memo of December 6,
2006 was kept by my superiors, and was never returned to me with any actual
decision by the
superiors on this matter.
Subsequently, around
April 21-23, 2008, the Statement for Pope Benedict XVI about the pattern of
sexual
abuse
crisis in the United States, by Richard Sipe, was published on the
internet, at richardsipe.com. On
April 24, it was passed
on by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal
William Levada, to the
Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone. It was delivered to me one month
later, on May 24, 2008.
The following day, I
delivered a new memo to the new Substitute, Fernando Filoni, which included my
previous one of
December 6, 2006. In it, I summarized Richard Sipe’s document, which ended with
this
respectful and
heartfelt appeal to Pope Benedict XVI: “I approach Your Holiness with due
reverence, but
with
the same intensity that motivated Peter Damian to lay out before your
predecessor, Pope Leo IX, a
description
of the condition of the clergy during his time. The problems he spoke of are
similar and as
great
now in the United States as they were then in Rome. If Your Holiness requests,
I will personally
submit
to you documentation of that about which I have spoken.”
I ended my memo by
repeating to my superiors that I thought it was necessary to intervene as soon
as
possible by removing
the cardinal’s hat from Cardinal McCarrick and that he should be subjected to
the
sanctions established
by the Code of Canon Law, which also provide for reduction to the lay state.
This second memo of
mine was also never returned to the Personnel Office, and I was greatly
dismayed at
my superiors for the
inconceivable absence of any measure against the Cardinal, and for the
continuing
lack of any communication
with me since my first memo in December 2006.
But finally I learned
with certainty, through Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, then-Prefect of the
Congregation for
Bishops, that Richard Sipe’s courageous and meritorious Statement had had the
desired
result. Pope
Benedict had imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now
imposed
on him
by Pope Francis: the Cardinal was to leave the seminary where he was living, he
was
forbidden
to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give
lectures, to travel,
with
the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance.
I do not know when Pope
Benedict took these measures against McCarrick, whether in 2009 or 2010,
because in the meantime
I had been transferred to the Governorate of Vatican City State, just as I do
not
know who was
responsible for this incredible delay. I certainly do not believe it was Pope
Benedict, who
as Cardinal had
repeatedly denounced the corruption present in the Church, and in the first months
of his
pontificate had already
taken a firm stand against the admission into seminary of young men with deep
homosexual tendencies.
I believe it was due to the Pope’s first collaborator at the time, Cardinal
Tarcisio
Bertone, who
notoriously favored promoting homosexuals into positions of responsibility, and
was
accustomed to managing
the information he thought appropriate to convey to the Pope.
In any case, what is
certain is that Pope Benedict imposed the above canonical sanctions on
McCarrick
and that they were communicated to him by the Apostolic Nuncio to the United
States,
Pietro
Sambi. Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, then first Counsellor of the
Nunciature in
Washington and Chargé
d'Affaires a.i. after the unexpected death of Nuncio Sambi in Baltimore,
told me
when I arrived in
Washington — and he is ready to testify to it— about a stormy conversation,
lasting
over an hour, that
Nuncio Sambi had with Cardinal McCarrick whom he had summoned to the
Nunciature. Monsignor
Lantheaume told me that “the Nuncio’s voice could be heard all the way out
in
the
corridor.”
Pope Benedict’s same
dispositions were then also communicated to me by the new Prefect of the
Congregation for
Bishops, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, in November 2011, in a conversation before my
departure for
Washington, and were included among the instructions of the same Congregation
to the new
Nuncio.
In turn, I repeated
them to Cardinal McCarrick at my first meeting with him at the Nunciature. The
Cardinal, muttering in
a barely comprehensible way, admitted that he had perhaps made the mistake of
sleeping in the same
bed with some seminarians at his beach house, but he said this as if it had no
importance.
The faithful
insistently wonder how it was possible for him to be appointed to Washington,
and as
Cardinal, and they have
every right to know who knew, and who covered up his grave misdeeds. It is
therefore my duty to
reveal what I know about this, beginning with the Roman Curia.
Cardinal
Angelo Sodano was Secretary of State until September 2006: all information was
communicated to him. In
November 2000, Nunzio Montalvo sent him his report, passing on to him the
aforementioned letter
from Father Boniface Ramsey in which he denounced the serious abuses committed
by McCarrick.
It is known that Sodano
tried to cover up the Father Maciel scandal to the end. He even removed the
Nuncio in Mexico City,
Justo Mullor, who refused to be an accomplice in his scheme to cover Maciel,
and in his place
appointed Sandri, then-Nuncio to Venezuela, who was willing to collaborate in
the coverup.
Sodano even went so far
as to issue a statement to the Vatican press office in which a falsehood was
affirmed, that is, that
Pope Benedict had decided that the Maciel case should be considered closed.
Benedict reacted,
despite Sodano’s strenuous defense, and Maciel was found guilty and irrevocably
condemned.
Was McCarrick’s
appointment to Washington and as Cardinal the work of Sodano, when John Paul II
was already very ill?
We are not given to know. However, it is legitimate to think so, but I do not
think he
was the only one
responsible for this. McCarrick frequently went to Rome and made friends
everywhere,
at all levels of the
Curia. If Sodano had protected Maciel, as seems certain, there is no reason why
he
wouldn’t have done so
for McCarrick, who according to many had the financial means to influence
decisions. His
nomination to Washington was opposed by then-Prefect of the Congregation for
Bishops,
Cardinal Giovanni
Battista Re. At the Nunciature in Washington there is a note, written in his
hand, in
which Cardinal Re
disassociates himself from the appointment and states that McCarrick was 14th
on the
list for Washington.
Nuncio Sambi’s report,
with all the attachments, was sent to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, as
Secretary of
State. My two
above-mentioned memos of December 6, 2006 and May 25, 2008, were also
presumably
handed over to him by
the Substitute. As already mentioned, the Cardinal had no difficulty in
insistently
presenting for the
episcopate candidates known to be active homosexuals — I cite only the
well-known
case of Vincenzo de
Mauro, who was appointed Archbishop-Bishop of Vigevano and later removed
because he was
undermining his seminarians — and in filtering and manipulating the information
he
conveyed to Pope
Benedict.
Cardinal
Pietro Parolin, the current Secretary of State, was also complicit in covering
up the misdeeds
of McCarrick who had, after
the election of Pope Francis, boasted openly of his travels and missions to
various continents. In
April 2014, the Washington Times had a front page report on McCarrick’s
trip to
the Central African
Republic, and on behalf of the State Department no less. As Nuncio to
Washington, I
wrote to Cardinal
Parolin asking him if the sanctions imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict were
still
valid. Ça va sans
dire that my letter never received any reply!
The same can be said
for Cardinal William Levada, former Prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine
of the Faith, for Cardinals
Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Lorenzo
Baldisseri,
former Secretary of the
same Congregation for Bishops, and Archbishop Ilson de Jesus Montanari,
current Secretary of
the same Congregation. They were all aware by reason of their office of the
sanctions
imposed by Pope
Benedict on McCarrick.
Cardinals
Leonardo Sandri, Fernando Filoni and Angelo Becciu, as
Substitutes of the Secretariat of
State, knew in every detail
the situation regarding Cardinal McCarrick.
Nor could Cardinals
Giovanni Lajolo and Dominique Mamberti have failed to know. As Secretaries
for Relations with
States, they participated several times a week in collegial meetings with the
Secretary
of State.
As far as the Roman
Curia is concerned, for the moment I will stop here, even if the names of other
prelates in the Vatican
are well known, even some very close to Pope Francis, such as Cardinal
Francesco
Coccopalmerio and Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who belong to the
homosexual current in
favor of subverting
Catholic doctrine on homosexuality, a current already denounced in 1986 by
Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger,
then-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the Letter
to the
Bishops
of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. Cardinals
EdwinFrederick
O’Brien and Renato Raffaele Martino also belong to the same
current, albeit with a different ideology.
Others
belonging to this current even reside at the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
Now to the United
States. Obviously, the first to have been informed of the measures taken by
Pope
Benedict was
McCarrick’s successor in Washington See, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, whose
situation is
now completely
compromised by the recent revelations regarding his behavior as Bishop of
Pittsburgh.
It is absolutely
unthinkable that Nunzio Sambi, who was an extremely responsible person, loyal,
direct
and explicit in his way
of being (a true son of Romagna) did not speak to him about it. In any case, I
myself brought up the
subject with Cardinal Wuerl on several occasions, and I certainly didn’t need
to go
into detail because it
was immediately clear to me that he was fully aware of it. I also remember in
particular the fact
that I had to draw his attention to it, because I realized that in an
archdiocesan
publication, on the
back cover in color, there was an announcement inviting young men who thought
they
had a vocation to the
priesthood to a meeting with Cardinal McCarrick. I immediately phoned Cardinal
Wuerl, who expressed
his surprise to me, telling me that he knew nothing about that announcement and
that he would cancel
it. If, as he now continues to state, he knew nothing of the abuses committed
by
McCarrick and the
measures taken by Pope Benedict, how can his answer be explained?
His recent statements
that he knew nothing about it, even though at first he cunningly referred to
compensation for the
two victims, are absolutely laughable. The Cardinal lies shamelessly and
prevails
upon his Chancellor,
Monsignor Antonicelli, to lie as well.
Cardinal Wuerl also
clearly lied on another occasion. Following a morally unacceptable event
authorized
by the academic
authorities of Georgetown University, I brought it to the attention of
its President, Dr.
John DeGioia, sending
him two subsequent letters. Before forwarding them to the addressee, so as to
handle things properly,
I personally gave a copy of them to the Cardinal with an accompanying letter I
had written. The
Cardinal told me that he knew nothing about it. However, he failed to
acknowledge
receipt of my two
letters, contrary to what he customarily did. I subsequently learned that the
event at
Georgetown had taken
place for seven years. But the Cardinal knew nothing about it!
Cardinal Wuerl, well
aware of the continuous abuses committed by Cardinal McCarrick and the
sanctions
imposed on him by Pope
Benedict, transgressing the Pope’s order, also allowed him to reside at a
seminary in Washington
D.C. In doing so, he put other seminarians at risk.
Bishop
Paul Bootkoski, emeritus of Metuchen, and Archbishop John Myers, emeritus
of Newark,
covered up the abuses
committed by McCarrick in their respective dioceses and compensated two of his
victims. They cannot
deny it and they must be interrogated in order to reveal every circumstance and
all
responsibility
regarding this matter.
Cardinal
Kevin Farrell, who was recently interviewed by the media, also said that he
didn’t have the
slightest idea about the
abuses committed by McCarrick. Given his tenure in Washington, Dallas and now
Rome, I think no one
can honestly believe him. I don’t know if he was ever asked if he knew about
Maciel’s crimes. If he
were to deny this, would anybody believe him given that he occupied positions
of
responsibility as a
member of the Legionaries of Christ?
Regarding Cardinal
Sean O’Malley, I would simply say that his latest statements on the
McCarrick case
are disconcerting, and
have totally obscured his transparency and credibility.
My conscience requires
me also to reveal facts that I have experienced personally, concerning Pope
Francis, that have a
dramatic significance, which as Bishop, sharing the collegial responsibility of
all the
bishops for the
universal Church, do not allow me to remain silent, and that I state here,
ready to reaffirm
them under oath by
calling on God as my witness.
In the last months of
his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI had convened a meeting of all the apostolic
nuncios in Rome, as
Paul VI and St. John Paul II had done on several occasions. The date set for
the
audience with the Pope
was Friday, June 21, 2013. Pope Francis kept this commitment made by his
predecessor. Of course
I also came to Rome from Washington. It was my first meeting with the new Pope
elected only three
months prior, after the resignation of Pope Benedict.
On the morning of
Thursday, June 20, 2013, I went to the Domus Sanctae Marthae, to join my
colleagues
who were staying there.
As soon as I entered the hall I met Cardinal McCarrick, who wore the redtrimmed
cassock. I greeted him respectfully as I had always done. He immediately said
to me, in a tone somewhere between ambiguous and triumphant: “The Pope
received me yesterday, tomorrow I am going to China.”
At the time I knew
nothing of his long friendship with Cardinal Bergoglio and of the important
part he
had played in his
recent election, as McCarrick himself would later reveal in a lecture at
Villanova
University and in an
interview with the National Catholic Reporter. Nor had I ever thought of
the fact
that he had
participated in the preliminary meetings of the recent conclave, and of the
role he had been
able to have as a
cardinal elector in the 2005 conclave. Therefore I did not immediately grasp
the meaning
of the encrypted
message that McCarrick had communicated to me, but that would become clear to
me in
the days immediately
following.
The next day the
audience with Pope Francis took place. After his address, which was partly read
and
partly delivered off
the cuff, the Pope wished to greet all the nuncios one by one. In single file,
I
remember that I was
among the last. When it was my turn, I just had time to say to him, “I am the
Nuncio
to the United States.”
He immediately assailed me with a tone of reproach, using these words: “The
Bishops
in the United States must not be ideologized! They must be shepherds!” Of
course I was not in
a position to ask for
explanations about the meaning of his words and the aggressive way in which he
had
upbraided me. I had in
my hand a book in Portuguese that Cardinal O’Malley had sent me for the Pope a
few days earlier,
telling me “so he could go over his Portuguese before going to Rio for World
Youth
Day.” I
handed it to him immediately, and so freed myself from that extremely
disconcerting and
embarrassing situation.
At the end of the
audience the Pope announced: “Those of you who are still in Rome next Sunday
are
invited
to concelebrate with me at the Domus Sanctae Marthae.” I
naturally thought of staying on to
clarify as soon as
possible what the Pope intended to tell me.
On Sunday June 23,
before the concelebration with the Pope, I asked Monsignor Ricca, who as the
person
in charge of the house
helped us put on the vestments, if he could ask the Pope if he could receive me
sometime in the
following week. How could I have returned to Washington without having
clarified what
the Pope wanted of me?
At the end of Mass, while the Pope was greeting the few lay people present,
Monsignor Fabian
Pedacchio, his Argentine secretary, came to me and said: “The Pope told me
to ask if
you
are free now!” Naturally, I replied that I was at the Pope’s disposal and that I
thanked him for
receiving me
immediately. The Pope took me to the first floor in his apartment and said: “We
have 40
minutes
before the Angelus.”
I began the
conversation, asking the Pope what he intended to say to me with the words he
had addressed
to me when I greeted him
the previous Friday. And the Pope, in a very different, friendly, almost
affectionate tone, said
to me: “Yes, the Bishops in the United States must not be ideologized,
they must
not be
right-wing like the Archbishop of Philadelphia, (the
Pope did not give me the name of the
Archbishop) they
must be shepherds; and they must not be left-wing — and he added,
raising both arms
— and when I say
left-wing I mean homosexual.” Of course, the logic of the correlation
between being
left-wing and being
homosexual escaped me, but I added nothing else.
Immediately after, the
Pope asked me in a deceitful way: “What is Cardinal McCarrick like?” I
answered him with
complete frankness and, if you want, with great naiveté: “Holy Father, I
don’t know if
you
know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation for Bishops there is a
dossier this thick
about
him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict
ordered him to
withdraw
to a life of prayer and penance.” 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. But then, what was the
Pope’s
purpose in asking me
that question: “What is Cardinal McCarrick like?” He clearly wanted to
find out if
I was an ally of
McCarrick or not.
Back in Washington
everything became very clear to me, thanks also to a new event that occurred
only a
few days after my
meeting with Pope Francis. When the new Bishop Mark Seitz took possession of
the
Diocese of El Paso on
July 9, 2013, I sent the first Counsellor, Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume,
while I went to Dallas
that same day for an international meeting on Bioethics. When he got back,
Monsignor Lantheaume
told me that in El Paso he had met Cardinal McCarrick who, taking him aside,
told him almost the
same words that the Pope had said to me in Rome: “the Bishops in the
United States
must
not be ideologized, they must not be right-wing, they must be shepherds….” I was
astounded! It
was therefore clear
that the words of reproach that Pope Francis had addressed to me on June 21,
2013
had been put into his
mouth the day before by Cardinal McCarrick. Also the Pope’s mention “not
like the
Archbishop
of Philadelphia” could be traced to McCarrick, because there had been a strong
disagreement
between the two of them
about the admission to Communion of pro-abortion politicians.
In his communication to
the bishops, McCarrick had manipulated a letter of then-Cardinal Ratzinger who
prohibited giving them
Communion. Indeed, I also knew how certain Cardinals such as Mahony, Levada
and Wuerl, were closely
linked to McCarrick; they had opposed the most recent appointments made by
Pope Benedict, for
important posts such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, Denver and San Francisco.
Not happy with the trap
he had set for me on June 23, 2013, when he asked me about McCarrick, only a
few months later, in
the audience he granted me on October 10, 2013, Pope Francis set a second one
for
me, this time
concerning a second of his protégés, Cardinal Donald Wuerl. He asked me: “What
is
Cardinal
Wuerl like, is he good or bad?” I replied, “Holy Father, I
will not tell you if he is good or bad,
but I
will tell you two facts.” They are the ones I have already mentioned
above, which concern Wuerl’s
pastoral carelessness
regarding the aberrant deviations at Georgetown University and the
invitation by the
Archdiocese of
Washington to young aspirants to the priesthood to a meeting with McCarrick!
Once
again the Pope did not
show any reaction.
It was also clear that,
from the time of Pope Francis’s election, McCarrick, now free from all
constraints,
had felt free to travel
continuously, to give lectures and interviews. In a team effort with Cardinal
Rodriguez
Maradiaga, he had become the kingmaker for appointments in the Curia
and the United
States, and the most
listened to advisor in the Vatican for relations with the Obama administration.
This is
how one explains that,
as members of the Congregation for Bishops, the Pope replaced Cardinal Burke
with Wuerl and
immediately appointed Cupich right after he was made a cardinal.
With theseappointments
the Nunciature in Washington was now out of the picture in the appointment of
bishops. In addition, he appointed the Brazilian Ilson de Jesus Montanari —
the great friend of his private Argentine secretary Fabian Pedacchio — as
Secretary of the same Congregation for Bishops and
Secretary of the
College of Cardinals, promoting him in one single leap from a simple official
of that
department to
Archbishop Secretary. Something unprecedented for such an important position!
The appointments of Blase
Cupich to Chicago and Joseph W. Tobin to Newark were orchestrated by
McCarrick,
Maradiaga and Wuerl, united by a wicked pact of abuses by the first, and at least of
coverup of abuses by
the other two. Their names were not among those presented by the Nunciature for
Chicago and Newark.
Regarding Cupich,
one cannot fail to note his ostentatious arrogance, and the insolence with
which he
denies the evidence
that is now obvious to all: that 80% of the abuses found were committed against
young adults by
homosexuals who were in a relationship of authority over their victims.
During the speech he gave when he took possession of the Chicago See, at which I was present as a
representative of the
Pope, Cupich quipped that one certainly should not expect the new Archbishop to
walk on water. Perhaps
it would be enough for him to be able to remain with his feet on the ground and
not try to turn reality
upside-down, blinded by his pro-gay ideology, as he stated in a recent
interview
with America
Magazine.
Extolling his
particular expertise in the matter, having been President of the Committee
on Protection of Children and Young People of the USCCB, he
asserted that the main problem in the crisis of sexual
abuse by clergy is not homosexuality, and that affirming this is only a way of diverting attention
from the real problem which is clericalism. In support of this thesis, Cupich
“oddly” made reference to the
results of research carried out at the height of the sexual abuse of minors
crisis in the early 2000s, while
he “candidly” ignored that the results of that investigation were totally
denied by the subsequent
Independent Reports by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2004
and 2011, which concluded that, in
cases of sexual abuse, 81% of the victims were male. In fact, Father Hans
Zollner, S.J., Vice-Rector of the
Pontifical Gregorian University, President of the Centre for Child
Protection, and Member of the
Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, recently told the newspaper
La Stampa
that “in most cases it is a question of homosexual abuse.”
The appointment of
McElroy in San Diego was also orchestrated from above, with an encrypted
peremptory order to me
as Nuncio, by Cardinal Parolin: “Reserve the See of San Diego for McElroy.”
McElroy was also well
aware of McCarrick’s abuses, as can be seen from a letter sent to him by
Richard
Sipe on July 28, 2016.
These characters are
closely associated with individuals belonging in particular to the deviated
wing of
the Society of Jesus,
unfortunately today a majority, which had already been a cause of serious
concern to
Paul VI and subsequent
pontiffs. We need only consider Father Robert Drinan, S.J., who was
elected
four times to the House
of Representatives, and was a staunch supporter of abortion; or Father
Vincent
O’Keefe,
S.J., one of the principal promoters of The Land O’Lakes Statement of
1967, which seriously
compromised the
Catholic identity of universities and colleges in the United States. It should
be noted
that McCarrick, then
President of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, also participated in that
inauspicious
undertaking which was so harmful to the formation of the consciences of
American youth,
closely associated as
it was with the deviated wing of the Jesuits.
Father
James Martin, S.J., acclaimed by the people mentioned above, in particular Cupich,
Tobin,
Farrell
and McElroy, appointed Consultor of the Secretariat for Communications,
well-known activist
who promotes the LGBT
agenda, chosen to corrupt the young people who will soon gather in Dublin for
the World Meeting of
Families, is nothing but a sad recent example of that deviated wing of the
Society
of Jesus.
Pope
Francis has repeatedly asked for total transparency in the Church and for
bishops and
faithful
to act with parrhesia. The faithful throughout the world also demand
this of him in an
exemplary
manner. He must honestly state when he first learned about the crimes committed
by
McCarrick,
who abused his authority with seminarians and priests.
In any
case, the Pope learned about it from me on June 23, 2013 and continued to cover
for him. He
did
not take into account the sanctions that Pope Benedict had imposed on him and
made him his
trusted
counselor along with Maradiaga.
The latter [Maradiaga]
is so confident of the Pope’s protection that he can dismiss as “gossip” the
heartfelt appeals of
dozens of his seminarians, who found the courage to write to him after one of
them
tried to commit suicide
over homosexual abuse in the seminary.
By now the faithful
have well understood Maradiaga’s strategy: insult the victims to save
himself, lie to
the bitter end to cover
up a chasm of abuses of power, of mismanagement in the administration of Church
property, and of
financial disasters even against close friends, as in the case of the
Ambassador of
Honduras Alejandro
Valladares, former Dean of the Diplomatic Corps to the Holy See.
In the case of the
former Auxiliary Bishop Juan José Pineda, after the article published in the
[Italian]
weekly L’Espresso last
February, Maradiaga stated in the newspaper Avvenire: “It was my
auxiliary
bishop
Pineda who asked for the visitation, so as to ‘clear’ his name after being
subjected to much
slander.”
Now, regarding Pineda the only thing that has been made public is
that his resignation has
simply been accepted,
thus making any possible responsibility of his and Maradiaga vanish into
nowhere.
In the name of the
transparency so hailed by the Pope, the report that the Visitator, Argentine
bishop
Alcides Casaretto,
delivered more than a year ago only and directly to the Pope, must be made
public.
Finally, the recent appointment
as Substitute of Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra is also connected with
Honduras, that is, with
Maradiaga. From 2003 to 2007 Peña Parra worked as Counsellor at the
Tegucigalpa Nunciature.
As Delegate for Pontifical Representations I received worrisome information
about him.
In Honduras, a scandal
as huge as the one in Chile is about to be repeated. The Pope defends his man,
Cardinal Rodriguez
Maradiaga, to the bitter end, as he had done in Chile with Bishop Juan de la
Cruz
Barros, whom he himself
had appointed Bishop of Osorno against the advice of the Chilean Bishops. First
he insulted the abuse
victims. Then, only when he was forced by the media, and a revolt by the
Chilean
victims and faithful,
did he recognize his error and apologize, while stating that he had been
misinformed,
causing a disastrous
situation for the Church in Chile, but continuing to protect the two Chilean
Cardinals
Errazuriz and Ezzati.
Even in the tragic
affair of McCarrick, Pope Francis’s behavior was no different. He knew from at
least
June 23, 2013 that
McCarrick was a serial predator. Although he knew that he was a corrupt man, he
covered for him to the
bitter end; indeed, he made McCarrick’s advice his own, which was certainly not
inspired by sound
intentions and for love of the Church. It was only when he was forced by the
report of
the abuse of a minor,
again on the basis of media attention, that he took action [regarding
McCarrick] to
save his image in the
media.
Now in the United
States a chorus of voices is rising especially from the lay faithful, and has
recently
been joined by several
bishops and priests, asking that all those who, by their silence, covered up
McCarrick’s criminal
behavior, or who used him to advance their career or promote their intentions,
ambitions and power in
the Church, should resign.
But this will not be
enough to heal the situation of extremely grave immoral behavior by the clergy:
bishops and priests. A
time of conversion and penance must be proclaimed. The virtue of chastity must
be
recovered in the clergy
and in seminaries. Corruption in the misuse of the Church’s resources and of
the
offerings of the
faithful must be fought against. The seriousness of homosexual behavior must be
denounced. The
homosexual networks present in the Church must be eradicated, as Janet Smith,
Professor
of Moral Theology at
the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, recently wrote. “The problem of
clergy
abuse,” she wrote, “cannot be resolved simply by the resignation of
some bishops, and even less so
by
bureaucratic directives. The deeper problem lies in homosexual networks within
the clergy which must
be
eradicated.” These homosexual networks, which are now widespread in many
dioceses, seminaries,
religious orders, etc.,
act under the concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus
tentacles,
and strangle innocent
victims and priestly vocations, and are strangling the entire Church.
I
implore everyone, especially Bishops, to speak up in order to defeat this
conspiracy of silence that
is so
widespread, and to report the cases of abuse they know about to the media and
civil
authorities.
Let us heed the most
powerful message that St. John Paul II left us as an inheritance: Do not
be afraid!
Do not
be afraid!
In his 2008 homily on
the Feast of the Epiphany, Pope Benedict reminded us that the Father’s plan of
salvation had been
fully revealed and realized in the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection,
but it
needs to be welcomed in
human history, which is always a history of fidelity on God’s part and
unfortunately also of
infidelity on the part of us men. The Church, the depositary of the blessing of
the
New Covenant, signed in
the blood of the Lamb, is holy but made up of sinners, as Saint Ambrose wrote:
the Church is “immaculata
ex maculatis,” she is holy and spotless even though, in her earthly
journey,
she is made up of men
stained with sin.
I want to recall this
indefectible truth of the Church’s holiness to the many people who have been so
deeply scandalized by
the abominable and sacrilegious behavior of the former Archbishop of
Washington,
Theodore McCarrick; by
the grave, disconcerting and sinful conduct of Pope Francis and by the
conspiracy of silence
of so many pastors, and who are tempted to abandon the Church, disfigured by so
many ignominies. At the
Angelus on Sunday, August 12, 2018 Pope Francis said these words: “Everyone
is
guilty for the good he could have done and did not do ... If we do not oppose
evil, we tacitly feed it.
We need
to intervene where evil is spreading; for evil spreads where daring Christians
who oppose evil
with
good are lacking.”
If this is rightly to be
considered a serious moral responsibility for every believer, how much
graver is it for the Church’s supreme pastor, who in the case of McCarrick not
only did not oppose evil but
associated himself in doing evil with someone he knew to be deeply corrupt. He followed the advice of
someone he knew well to be a pervert, thus multiplying exponentially with his supreme authority the
evil done by McCarrick. And how many other evil pastors is Francis still continuing to prop up
in their active destruction of the Church!
Francis is abdicating
the mandate which Christ gave to Peter to confirm the brethren. Indeed, by his
action he has divided
them, led them into error, and encouraged the wolves to continue to tear apart
the
sheep of Christ’s
flock.
In this extremely
dramatic moment for the universal Church, he must acknowledge his mistakes and,
in
keeping with the
proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to
set a good
example
for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along
with all of
them.
Even in dismay and
sadness over the enormity of what is happening, let us not lose hope! We
well know
that the great majority
of our pastors live their priestly vocation with fidelity and dedication.
It is in moments of
great trial that the Lord’s grace is revealed in abundance and makes His
limitless
mercy available to all;
but it is granted only to those who are truly repentant and sincerely propose
to
amend their lives. This
is a favorable time for the Church to confess her sins, to convert, and to do
penance.
Let us
all pray for the Church and for the Pope, let us remember how many times he has
asked us
to
pray for him!
Let us all renew faith
in the Church our Mother: “I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic
Church!”
Christ
will never abandon His Church! He generated her in His Blood and continually
revives her
with
His Spirit!
Mary,
Mother of the Church, pray for us!
Mary,
Virgin and Queen, Mother of the King of glory, pray for us!
Rome, August 22, 2018
Queenship
of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Official translation by Diane
Montagna
