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It's worth looking back on 'the Vigano letters' -
as disreputable and bizarre as they prove to be
Before the MSM, particularly the Italian media, get into fresh conniptions about Vatileaks one year since it all started oozing out like slime, I thought it might be useful to re-post the letters written by Mons. Vigano to Cardinal Bertone and the Pope that began the dribble... I was able to find the texts of both letters and translate them for the Forum several days after they were first disclosed - in the course of which 1) the Vatican had issued an immediate statement questioning the accusations implicit in the letters; 2) Andrea Tornielli looked into these 'accusations' and reported that the Pope had ordered them investigated in 2011 by a special commission headed by an auditor of the Roman Rota. and they were found to be unsubstantiated; and 3) the Vatican Press Office released a statement by Cardinals Giuseppe Bertello and Giovanni Lajolo, current and immediate past presidents of the Governatorate, respectively, along with the current Secretary (Vigano's successor), and his deputy (who was also Vigano's deputy) explicitly saying, "These assertions (Vigano's) are the outcome of erroneous judgment, or based on fears that have not been borne out by proof but openly contradicted by the principal persons cited by the letters as witnesses to such assertions".
This is significant, because all three statements - especially the fact that the Pope had already ordered Vigano's accusations investigated by a special commission - have hardly ever been referred to in all the subsequent reporting about Vigano's shotgun attack {"If I shoot as many bullets as I can. I'm bound to hit something!"), yet his letters have been held up by the media as Exhibit #1 to 'prove' the charge made by Paolo Gabriele that "there is evil and corruption everywhere in the Vatican".
I said at the time that the tone and content of the Vigano letters were bizarre and anachronistically Byzantine. They sound even more so now. I also noted then that the US media seemed "wary and careful about reporting the 'Vigano case' beyond the bare minimum, to the point of not even pressing Vigano to make a statement about an issue that would otherwise be scalding hot - one that the Italian and European media have quickly morphed into a case of corruption against the Vatican, rather than a rather low tale of ambition and frustration at a fairly high ecclesiastical level".
So, for the record - and with my fisking where necessary and relevant - here are the two Vigano letters. Avoid the blue, if you do not wish to be burdened by my comments. Ellipses, indicated by '...' are omissions decided upon by the editor of Il Fatto Quotidiano which published the letters:
Sunday, May 8, 2011
His Eminence
The Most Rev. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone
Secretary of State
Vatican City
In the private letter that I addressed to you on March 27, 2011, which I personally entrusted to the Holy Father in view of the sensitive matters it contained, I stated that I thought the very radical change in your opinion about my person that Your Eminence showed me at our meeting on March 22 could only be the result of grave calumnies against me and my work [at the Governatorate]...
And now, after various items of information that have come to my possession, and in sincere and faithful support of the work of Your Eminence, who has been given a responsibility that is very onerous and exposed to pressure by persons who are not necessarily well-meaning... in a spirit of loyalty and faithfulness I think it is my duty to refer to Your Eminence facts and initiatives about which I am completely sure, that have emerged in recent weeks designed expressly with the end of leading Your Eminence to radically change your opinion on my account, with the intention of preventing that the undersigned will succeed Cardinal Lajolo as President of the Governatorate, something that has been well-known in the Curia for some time. Reliable persons have spontaneously offered to me and to Mons. Corbellini, vice Secretary-General of the Governatorate, proofs and testimonials of the following:
1. As the deadline for the abovementioned change of leadership at the Governatorate, the strategy carried out to destroy me [per distruggermi]in the eyes of Your Eminence included the publication of some articles in Il Giornale, which contained calumnious judgments and malicious insinuations against me.
Already last March, independent sources, all of them particularly qualified - Dott. Giani [Domenico Giani, former Italian fiscal police and secret service officer, now the security chief and Chief Inspector of the Vatican Gendarmerie]; Prof. Gotti Tedeschi [president of the Vatican bank IOR], Prof. Vian [Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of L'Osservatore Romano], have verified with proof a close link of the publication of such articles with Dott. Marco Simeon, at least as the conveyor of [defamatory] fliers coming from inside the Vatican.
To confirm, but above all, to supplement such reports, written testimony came to me and to Mons. Corbellini [Vigano's deputy SG at the Governatorate] from Dott. Egidio Maggioni [ex-president of the of the advertising firm Socially Responsible Italia s.p.a., which has business relations with the Vatican], a person who is well connected in the media, well-known and esteemed in the Curia, among others, by Dott. Gasbarri [administrative director of Vatican Radio and coordinator of papal trips], by Mons. Corbellini himself and by Mons. Zagnoli, ex-head of the Ethnologic-Missionary Museum of the Vatican Museums. [The whole paragraph-long sentence is to bolster the 'credentials' of Maggioni. before disclosing what he reportedly told Vigano, as follows:]
Dott. Maggioni has testified that the author of the amonymous fliers coming from the Vatican is Mons. Paolo Nicolini, delegate for the administrative-managerial services of the Vatican Museums. Dott. Maggioni's testimony takes on a decisive value in that he received this information from the editor of Il Giornale himself, Mr. Alessandro Sallusti, with whom Maggioni has a had a close friendship of long standing.
2. The involvement of Mons. Nicolini, which is particularly deplorable since he is a priest and an employee of the Vatican Museums, is confirmed by the fact that the same monsignor, last March 31, during lunch, confided to Dott. Sabatino Napolitano, director of Economic Services at the Governatorate, during a conversation between them as football enthusiasts, that very soon, in addition to celebrating the championship victory of Inter, a more important event would be celebrated, namely, my removal from the Governatorate... [Omitted by the editor].
3. On the same Mons. Nicolini, other reprovable facts emerged concerning the correctness of his administration, starting from his time at the Pontifical Lateran University where, according to testimony by Mons. Rino Fisichella [now president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, and before that, Rector Magnificus of Lateran U], he was found to have been responsible for falsifying invoices and a cash shortage of 70,000 euro.
The monsignor also has interests [stocks?] in the Societa SRI Group of Dott. Giulio Gallazzi, a corporation which is currently in default for at least 2,200,000 euro to the Governatorate and which had previously defrauded L'Osservatore Romano, confirmed to me by Don Elio Torreggiani [director general of Tipografia Vaticana, the Vatican printing press], of more than 80,000 euros, and APSA [the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See], of more than 50,000 euro. Tables and documents in my possession demonstrate these affirmations, along with the fact that Mons. Nicolini holds a credit card in the name of the SRI Group (enabling him to charge) up to 2,500 euro a month.
4. Another chapter concerning Mons. Nicolini has to do with his management at the Vatican Museums... [details edited by the newspaper]A; vulgarity of behavior and language; arrogance and domineering towards co-workers who do not show him absolute servility; preferences, promotions and arbitrary assumptions made for personal ends - the complaints that have reached the Governatorate from Museum employees have been innumerable...{further omissions by the editor].
5. Since the behavior and acts of of Mons. Nicolini described above - beyond representing serious violations of justice and charity - are prosecutable as crimes, both in canon law as well as in civilian law, if there are no administrative proceedings against him, I will consider it my duty to take the judicial route. [So will Vigano be suing Nicolini now for these 'prosecutable crimes'????]
8. As for Dott. Simeon, although it is a more delicate task for me to speak about him, given that according to the media, he is someone particularly close to Your Eminence, nonetheless I cannot excuse myself from testifying that, from what I have personally come to learn as Delegate for Pontifical Representations [??? I have now read in another report that before being assigned to the Governatorate, Vigano was head of the Personnel Department at the Secretariat of State, i.e., a holdover from the Sodano administration; the ambiguous title he cites may be the official designation of that position], Dott. Simeon turns out to be a calumniator (in the case of which I have precise knowledge, he calumniated a priest) and that he himself is... [OMISSIS, i.e., further omissions exercised by the editor], and this was confirmed to me by prelates of the Curia and the Diplomatic Service. Regarding this serious affirmation about Dott. Simeon, I am able to furnish names, including bishops and priests, who have knowledge of the facts. [It has been hinted in an Italian media report that Vigano accused Simeon of homosexual practices.]
7. To the acts of denigration and calumnies against me, Dott. Saverio Petrillo [director of the Pontifical Villas in Castel Gandolfo] has also contributed, having been wounded in his pride because of an inquiry carried on by the Pontifical Gendarmerie following a robbery that occurred last year in the Pontifical Villas about which Dott. Petrillo failed to inform either his superiors at the Governatorate nor the Gendarmerie.
Further provoking his hostile reaction against me was the decision taken by Cardinal Lajolo (not by me) as Governatorate President, to entrust the management of the greenhouses in Castel Gandolfo to Luciano Cecchetti, who is in charge of the Vatican Gardens, with the intention of creating a synergy between the needs of the Gardens and the resources available at the Pontifical Villas, whose annual operating loss comes to 3.5 million euros. [Note he does not specify what 'acts of denigration and calumnies' Petrillo is alleged to have done.]
8. It should therefore not surprise anyone if other department heads at the Governatorate would be formulating criticisms against me, given the incisive actions to restructure and contain costs and expenses that I have carried out following the criteria of good administration, the instructions given to me by the Cardinal President, and the management advice from the consulting firm of McKinsey. I do not yet have proof of this [expected criticism from other Governatorate department heads]...[Omitted by the editor]
I consider that what I have described above is sufficient to dissipate the lies of those who intended to overturn the judgment of Your Eminence about my person and on my qualifications to continue my work at the Governatorate... [Omitted by the editor]
I have considered it my duty to do this, animated by the same sentiment of loyalty that I have for the Holy Father.
I actually was quite apprehensive that my recollection of the letter may be worse than it actually is, but translating it now has made me realize that my first overwhelmingly negative impression was correct. Vigano sought to 're-impress' Cardinal Bertone with why he ought to be kept on at the Governatorate and made its President by calumniating a wide assortment of persons whom he claims to have calumniated him, citing a gaggle of prominent names in the Vatican as 'witnesses' who either told him about the bad actions of his 'enemies' and/or have proof of such bad actions.
His argument amounts to: "Keep me on because look how bad other people are who are trying to prevent me from becoming President of the Governatorate (and cardinal). And I know they are bad and did bad things, because So-and-So and So-and-So told me so!" He sounds like a schoolyard snitch polishing an apple for the principal/school chaplain to convince him everyone is so bad and that only he ought to be class president or acolyte-in-chief.
And he comes off as a whiny, petty, paranoid, and TEEEEDIOUSSSS! gossip, certainly showing conduct unbecoming of a priest, let alone a bishop. Imagine him setting people to work to dig up dirt about Nicolini after he was told the story of that lunch! ("it emerges that...') And that's what John Allen calls 'high-mindedness'??? I believe Allen did not read the letter to Bertone at all, or he did, but chose to pretend it does not exist because it would undercut his 'saintly role model' hypothesis of Vigano!
I must repeat that I had absolutely no prejudices at all about Vigano before this 'scandal' erupted, because I did not know anything of him other than Tornielli's June 2011 report on why he was being moved out of the Vatican... I assumed he took his reassignment with disappointment but with good grace, not with this volcanic discontent, in which he does not care if the Pope and the Vatican get besmirched and targeted all over by media and other detractors! What is important to him is that he vents his rage and to hell with the consequences!... IMHO, the letters represent the unguarded depths to which an intelligent man can sink deliberately in pursuit of ambition.]
Vatican City-State
Governatorate
The Secretary General
To His Holiness
Pope Benedict XVI
Vatican City, July 7, 2011
Most Holy Father,
With deep sadness and disappointment I have received from the hands of the Most Eminent Cardinal Secretary of State the communication of the decision of Your Holiness to appoint me Apostolic Nuncio in the United States of America. In other circumstances, such an appointment would be a reason for joy and a sign of great esteem and trust in my regard, but in the present context, it will be perceived by all as a verdict of condemnation of my work, and therefore as a punishment. [That's whining, on the basis of a false premise. Only the few within the Vatican who were aware of the internal wrangling would even have thought about it at all. Not even the Vaticanistas made much of it at the time. Only Tornielli, to my knowledge, even bothered to report his nomination in the context of what had gone on in the Governatorate.]
In spite of the great damage to my reputation and the negative repercussions that this provision will provoke, my response cannot be anything but full adherence to the will of the Pope, as I have always done during my other than brief service to the Holy See. In the face of this harsh trial as well, I renew with profound faith my absolute obedience to the Vicar of Christ. [Full adherence??? Absolute obedience??? Vigano has much to learn about these virtues from Mons. Renato Boccardo - who had been Secretary-General at the Governatorate but was 'promoted and removed' to be Bishop of Spoleto-Norcia because of some issues which were never publicized (and one gathers had to do with financial maladministration)! And what 'great damage to my reputation' was Vigano worried - at a time when no one outside those directly concerned in the Curia, and the usual busybodies, knew about this whole thing. I don't think he meant reputation so much as 'losing face' among his peers for seemingly blowing his chance to become a cardinal when he fully expected to become one soon!]
The meeting granted to me by Your Holiness last April 4 brought me great comfort, as did the subsequent news that the Pope had instituted a special Committee super partes, charged with clarifying the delicate matter in which I have been involved; and thus it seemed reasonable to me to hope that any provision in my regard would be taken only at the conclusion of the work of the aforementioned Committee, in part so that punishment would not seem to be given to the one who, out of the duty of his office, had brought to the attention of his immediate superior, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, gravely deplorable actions and behaviors that, moreover, His Excellency Bishop Giorgio Corbellini, deputy secretary general, had in vain repeatedly reported and documented for the same superior – long before my arrival at the Governatorate – and that, in the absence of action on the part of the same cardinal, he had felt the need to report also to the secretariat of state. [Even to the Pope, he begins by accusing the man who was his immediate superior, Cardinal Lajolo, of ignoring reports of misdeeds, although he acknowledges here that the Pope had created a commission to investigate his charges. If that's not bad faith, what is?]
And I was even more saddened to learn, following the audience with the Most Eminent Cardinal Secretary of State last July 2, that Your Holiness agrees with the judgment of my actions in the terms in which this was previewed last June 26 in a blog post by Andrea Tornielli, namely that I am said to be guilty of having created a negative climate at the Governatorate, making relations more and more difficult between the secretary general and the heads of the offices, so much so as to make my transfer necessary.
In this regard, I would like to assure Your Holiness that this does not at all correspond to the truth. The other cardinal members of the Pontifical Committee of the Governatorate, who know very well how I have acted over the past two years, could inform you with greater objectivity, not having a stake in this matter, and easily prove how far from the truth is the information about me that has been reported to you, which has been the motive for your decision in my regard. [He does not know exactly what information was provided to the Pope, nor what motivated the Pope's decision! He cannot presume to know this on the basis of his own deductions! And once again he invokes the testimony of 'other cardinals' to vouch for him. ]
I am also grieved by the fact that, unfortunately having to care personally for an older brother who is a priest, seriously affected by a stroke that is gradually debilitating him mentally as well, I should have to leave right now, when I had expected to be able to resolve in a few months this family problem that so greatly worries me.
[Uncalled-for 'Woe is me!' argument! But worse, if we go by the court testimony cited in Il Giornale - even if the newspaper is supposed to be prejudiced against Mons. Vigano - is stretching the truth, to say it charitably: The brother has lived in Chicago since the 1980s; Mons. Vigano has never had a hand in his care (he had a stroke that partially paralyzed him), and has in fact asked a Milan court to declare his brother mentally incompetent in a bid to avoid giving him his fair share of a joint account controlled by Mons Vigano since they decided to pool their share (said to be about 30 million euros) of the family fortune after they both became priests.]
Your Holiness, for the reasons presented above, I turn to you with trust to ask you, for the sake of my reputation, to postpone for the necessary time the implementation of the decision you have already made, which at this moment would appear as an unjust sentence of condemnation in my regard, based on behaviors that have been falsely attributed to me, and to entrust the task of exploring the real situation of this matter, which also sees two Most Eminent Cardinals involved, to a truly independent body, for example the Apostolic Signatura. This would allow my transfer to be perceived as a normal replacement, and would also permit me to find a solution for my brother priest more easily.
[Three points: 1) Vigano's overriding concern was to save face because by not becoming President of the Governatorate, he would not now be a certainty for cardinal; 2) he reiterates his false claim about 'finding a solution for my brother priest'; and 3) God truly moves in mysterious ways, because all of a sudden, Mons. Pietro Sambi, who was the Nuncio to Washington, died on July 27 (20 days after the date of this letter], and there was no question of a postponement!]
If Your Holiness would grant me this, I would ardently desire, in honor of the truth, to be able to provide you personally with the elements necessary to clarify this delicate matter, in which the Holy Father has certainly been kept in the dark. [Again, how can he presume this? He does not know what information, pro and con, has reached the Holy Father, and who from. And the audacity of proposing to the Holy Father to fall in with a proposal intended only to advance his own personal plans, and not for any other reason - it's just breathtakingly selfish!]
With profound veneration, I renew for Your Holiness sentiments of filial devotion,
in Christ the Lord
+ Carlo Maria Viganò
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/01/2013 18:28] |