Mons Carlo Maria Vigano obviously anticipated the campaign to impugn his credibility and discredit him following his expose on what appears to be a deliberate cover-up on the part of Curial officials and US bishops under three popes to sweep under the rug accusations against bishops linked directly or indirectly to criminal sex abuses and/or their cover-up. Here is prompt response to one particular accusation which claims he himself was party to such a cover-up.
Viganò being discredited?
Here is his response
Translated from
August 28, 2018
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former Apostolic Nuncio to the USA, who recently said he had informed Pope Francis about the sexual misconduct allegations against now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick as early as June 2013, has released a new written statement which rejects as false some accounts of his handling of a sexual misconduct allegation against former Bishop Nienstedt of St Paul-Minneapolis at the time Vigano was nuncio. The accounts have been circulating since his expose in an attempt to discredit him.
An article in the
New York Times in 2016 had claimed that Vigano as nuncio had stopped a canonical investigation of Nienstedt who was later found innocent by a civilian court. The article claimed that in 201, Vigano had ordered two auxiliary bishops of the Diocese of st Paul-Minneapolis to block the investigation of Nienstedt and to destroy a letter the two bishops had written him to ‘protest’ his ‘decision’.
The claims were based on a statement by Fr Dan Griffith, the diocede’s delegate for the protection of minors, who claimed Vigano acted to cover up Nienstedt in order to avoid scandal.
Now that the claims have been revived with the aim of discrediting Vigano and undermine his credibility, Vigano was ready with another statement, also dated August 26 (the same date as his expose), to protest the falsity of the claims.
Here follows Mons. Vigano’s full statement in English:
Statement by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
regarding the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis
Accusations against my person appeared in the media – in July 2016, when I had already left my mission in Washington, D.C. – following the publication of a memorandum written by Father Dan Griffith, the then delegate for the protection of minors in the Archdiocese.
These accusations – alleging that I ordered the two Auxiliary Bishops of Minneapolis to close the investigation into the life of Archbishop John C. Nienstedt – are false.
Father Griffith was not present during my meeting at the Nunciature with the Archbishop and the two Auxiliaries on April 12, 2014, during which several affidavits containing accusations against Archbishop Nienstedt were handed to me.
These affidavits were collected by the firm, Greene Espel, who was retained by Father Griffith on behalf of the Archdiocese to investigate Archbishop Nienstedt. This firm belongs to the group “Lawyers for All Families,” who fought against Archbishop Nienstedt over the approval of same-sex marriage in the State of Minnesota.
In one of these affidavits, it was claimed that Archbishop Nienstedt had had an affair with a Swiss Guard during his service in the Vatican some twenty years prior.
Private investigators from the Greene Espel firm had conducted an inquiry in an unbalanced and prosecutorial style, and now wanted immediately to extend their investigation to the Pontifical Swiss Guard, without first hearing Archbishop Nienstedt.
I suggested to the bishops who came to the Nunciature on April 12, 2014, that they tell the Greene Espel lawyers that it appeared to me appropriate that Archbishop Nienstedt be heard before taking this step – audiatur et altera par (Let the other party be heard) – which they had not yet done. The bishops accepted my suggestion.
But the following day, I received a letter signed by the two auxiliaries, falsely asserting that I had suggested the investigation be stopped.
I never told anyone that Greene Espel should stop the inquiry, and I never ordered any document to be destroyed. Any statement to the contrary is false.
However, I did instruct one of the auxiliary bishops, Lee A. Piché, to remove from the computer and the archdiocesan archives the letter falsely asserting that I had suggested the investigation be halted.
I insisted on this not only to protect my name, but also that of the Nunciature and the Holy Father who would be unnecessarily harmed by having a false statement used against the Church.
The very day the news appeared in the New York Times, on July 21, 2016, the Holy Father asked Cardinal Parolin to phone the Nuncio in Washington, D.C. (Christophe Pierre), ordering that an investigation into my conduct be opened immediately, so that I could be reported to the tribunal in charge of judging abuse cover-up by bishops. [Wow, such alacrity on the part of the 'Holy Father' - something he has never shown about anybody else accused of sexual misconduct whether as pope or as archbishop of Buenos Aires!]
I informed the Vatican Press Office in the persons of Father Lombardi and Mr. Greg Burke. With the authorization of the Substitute of the Secretary of State, then-Archbishop Becciu, Mr. Jeffrey Lena – an American lawyer working for the Holy See – went to the Congregation for Bishops where he found documents proving that my conduct had been absolutely correct. Mr. Lena handed a written report exonerating me to the Holy Father. In spite of this, the Vatican Press Office did not deem it necessary to release a statement refuting the New York Times article.
The Nunciature also responded to Cardinal Parolin with a detailed report, which restored the truth and demonstrated that my conduct had been absolutely correct. This report is found in the Vatican Secretariat of State and at the Nunciature in Washington, DC.
On January 28, 2017, I wrote to both Archbishop Pierre and Archbishop Hebda (who had succeeded Nienstedt), asking them to publicly correct the Griffith memorandum. In spite of repeated emails and phone calls, I never heard back from them.
August 26, 2018
As Bergoglio recently said, 'Giudicate voi!"- Judge for yourself! BTW, one of the facts brought out by Valli in his account of how Vigano came to him on at least three occasions before releasing his expose, is that Vigano decided to leave Italy for parts unknown on that very day, as a self-protective move. One recalls the words of his temporary successor as Nuncio, Mons. Lantheaume, now out of the Vatican diplomatic service and back to being a simple priest somewhere in France, when he confirmed Vigano's account of the Nunciature's unsuccessful dealings with McCarrick about the disciplinary actions imposed on him by Benedict XVI: "These may be the last lines I write… if I am found chopped up by a chainsaw and my body sunk in concrete, the police and the hacks will say that we have to consider the hypothesis of suicide!!!"
See also recent tweets by Edward Pentin:
Meanwhile, Cardinal Wuerl, McCarrick's successor in Washington, DC, is sinking deeper into his quagmire of lies the more he protests his 'innocence'...
Viganò letter:
A spokesman confirms Cardinal Wuerl
cancelled meeting between McCarrick
and potential seminarians
[Yet insists he knew nothing of McCarrick's double life]
by Christopher Altieri
Monday, 27 Aug 2018
The bombshell letter of “testimony” written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States, regarding the Vatican’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations against the disgraced former Archbishop of Washington, DC, Theodore McCarrick, has raised more forcefully than ever several questions, including: what did McCarrick’s successor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, know – and when did he know it?
Cardinal Wuerl has said that he knew nothing of McCarrick’s alleged behaviour until news reached him of an allegation under review in the Archdiocese of New York, where McCarrick began his ecclesiastical career, according to which McCarrick sexually assaulted an altar boy on at least two occasions in St Patrick’s Cathedral, starting in 1971.
In his 11-page letter, Archbishop Viganò claims that Pope Benedict XVI became aware of at least some of the accusations against McCarrick, and imposed strict discipline on him around 2009 or 2010.
“I learned with certainty,” writes Viganò, “through Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, then prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, that [the American psychotherapist] Richard Sipe’s courageous and meritorious statement had had the desired result.” [BTW, this answers the question I had raised with great concern when Sipe's 'open letter' to Benedict XVI about McCarrick was recently publicized - though few had heard about it before. Which was whether B16 ever received Sipe's letter which was sent through then Nuncio Pietro Sambi. Obviously, the allegations against McCarrick did reach B16, probably though more than one source, and he deemed them credible enough to impose sanctions on McCarrick. One must however fault the Emeritus for failing to publicize this at all, because in this way, he would appear to be part of the entire cover-up effort for McCarrick. And has he failed to accept even now that his trust in Bertone was totally misplaced, that keeping him on after all his ineptitudes and other crass errors in administration - even ignoring the appeal of someone he knew for much longer than he did Bertone, the late Cardinal Meisner, to dismiss Bertone from his Curia - was among the most lamentable mistakes of his pontificate?]
In his letter, Viganò goes on to specify the nature of the disciplinary measures. “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.”
It is legitimate to ask whether Cardinal Wuerl – by then the Archbishop of Washington, DC, the archdiocese in which McCarrick resided – was completely unaware of the reported sanctions.
The Archdiocese of Washington told the Catholic Herald: “In spite of what Archbishop Viganò’s memo indicates, Cardinal Wuerl did not receive any documentation or information during his time in Washington regarding any actions taken against Archbishop McCarrick.”
One detail of the account Archbishop Viganò gives in his letter makes that assertion particularly worthy of scrutiny. The episode occurred some time after Viganò assumed his duties as nuncio in 2011, and before Francis’s election in March, 2013:
I had to draw [Cardinal Wuerl’s] attention to [the disciplinary measures], because I realised that in an archdiocesan publication, on the back cover in colour, 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?
Archdiocesan spokesman Ed McFadden confirmed for the Catholic Herald that Cardinal Wuerl did, in fact, cancel the event “at the nuncio’s request”.
At this point, the question becomes:
If Cardinal Wuerl was unaware of the sanctions, and unaware of the reason for them, why did he ask no questions of the nuncio regarding the reason for his demand?
Still, the sanctions to which Archbishop Viganò refers do seem to have been a closely guarded secret. This reporter spoke with one former Vatican Radio employee who had no recollection of ever being told not to talk to McCarrick. In some wise, the thing sounds like it may have been a sort of ecclesiastical “double-secret probation” in which only a select few high-ranking officials would have been aware of the measures, which in effect came to no more than a warning to McCarrick to keep his head down.
In any case, a source close to Cardinal Wuerl told the Catholic Herald that
Wuerl wrote to McCarrick in the midst of the preliminary investigation into the allegation that the New York archdiocesan review board would eventually find “credible and substantiated”, suggesting that McCarrick remove himself from public ministry and cease public appearances. McCarrick – who was still a cardinal at the time and apparently a cleric in good standing – rejected Cardinal Wuerl’s suggestion.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/08/2018 17:13]