By The Week. A letter from Archbishop Carlo Mari Vigano accusing Pope Francis of covering up disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct with men training to be priests was released Sunday morning, on the final day of the pope’s visit to Ireland. That was on purpose, Italian journalist and conservative blogger Marco Tosatti tells The Associated Press, saying he persuaded Vigano to go public with his allegations, helped write and edit his 11-page letter, and found conservative Catholic outlets that would publish it on Sunday morning.

Vigano claims that Pope Benedict XVI quietly ordered McCarrick to a life of secluded prayer and penance but that when Benedict stepped down, Francis rehabilitated the cardinal and lifted the sanctions until news of McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct became public. “Vigano called for Francis to resign over what he said was complicity in covering up McCarrick’s crimes,” AP says. “There is ample evidence, however, that the Vatican under Benedict and St. John Paul II also covered up that information, and that any sanctions Benedict imposed were never enforced.” (Read more from “The Story Behind Archbishop Vigano’s Polemic Against Pope Francis Just Got More Complicated” HERE)

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The Sneering Contempt of Pope Francis

By The Week. . .It is almost impossible to the overstate the significance of this letter. If Viganò is lying, he is guilty of one of the greatest slanders in the history of the Church. If he is telling the truth, the Eternal City is mired in filth unseen since the days of the Borgias, and Francis is among the worst wretches who has ever besmirched the Chair of Peter.

Asked on Sunday whether the accusations were true or false, Francis demurred. “I will not say a single word about this.” He then smugly invited the journalists who were present on the papal airplane to investigate the facts for themselves, as if he were a philosophy professor teaching a seminar to a roomful of eager graduate students instead of the Vicar of Christ. This is the same man who, despite endless PR about his commitment to victims, his hatred of clericalism, and his belief in treating gay and lesbian people with dignity, only a few months ago dismissed complaints made about his handling of sexual abuse allegations in Chile as the worthless gossip of “left-wingers,” a word that, according to Viganò, is synonymous in the pope’s vocabulary with gay people. It is not surprising that even churchmen named alongside Francis in the dossier have responded with what amount to non-denials that make no attempt to defend Francis. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., has said Viganò has provided no “objectively verifiable proof” of his claims.

Whatever the truth of Viganò’s numerous accusations — and the detailed chronology and references to documents in his letter mean that sooner or later it will be possible to prove or disprove them definitively — there are other truths that require facing now. This is true especially for those of us who have defended the Holy Father against slander and caricature in the past. Francis has revealed himself as an old-fashioned clericalist who views the faithful with contempt. It is not my place as a layman to tell the Holy Father his business, but I can make no secret of the fact that I long for an end to his gaslighting pontificate. (Read more from “The Sneering Contempt of Pope Francis” HERE)

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By Daily Wire. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), will not defend Pope Francis following Archbishop Viganò’s explosive claim that the Roman Pontiff participated in the covering up of disgraced D.C. Cardinal McCarrick’s crimes of sexual abuse against seminarians.

Responding to Viganò’s 11-page letter alleging that Pope Francis lifted sanctions that had been imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict, DiNardo did not take the Catholic left’s line of characterizing the Archbishop as a right-wing conspiracy theorist; instead, the prelate openly called for an investigation to uncover the truth.

“The questions raised deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence,” DiNardo said in a Monday statement, according to Crux Now. “Without those answers, innocent men may be tainted by false accusation and the guilty may be left to repeat sins of the past.” . . .

“I am eager for an audience with the Holy Father to earn his support for our plan of action,” said DiNardo earlier this month. “That plan includes more detailed proposals to: Seek out these answers, make reporting of abuse and misconduct by bishops easier, and improve procedures for resolving complaints against bishops.” (Read more from “Head of U.S. Bishops Conference Issues Shocking Statement on Pope Francis” HERE)

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This Abuse Scandal Leads All the Way to the Vatican

By NY Post. An ecclesial straight shooter. A reliable character. A serious man. That’s how sources familiar with Carlo Maria Viganò describe the Italian archbishop, who served as the Vatican ambassador to the United States from 2011 to 2016. His reputation makes the publication Saturday of Viganò’s written “testimony” about the Theodore McCarrick affair all the more inconvenient for those in the Catholic hierarchy who tried to bury the truth about the disgraced American prelate.

The core claim in the 11-page document is that a high-powered circle of silence for years abetted McCarrick’s career, despite his well-known penchant for sexual abuse. The circle of silence, Viganò says, included the current successor of Saint Peter. In a cryptic statement to reporters on Sunday, Pope Francis refused to confirm or deny the allegations, instead urging them to “read the document carefully and judge it for yourselves.”

The Viganò testimony bears the mark of a man seething with anger and perhaps facing the mystery of death. “It is in moments of great trial that the Lord’s grace is revealed in abundance and makes His limitless mercy available to all,” the 77-year-old churchman writes near the end. “But it is granted only to those who are truly repentant.”

Either Pope Benedict XVI imposed private sanctions against McCarrick in 2009-10, barring him from celebrating public Masses and cavorting with seminarians, or he didn’t. Either McCarrick’s successor as cardinal-archbishop of Washington, Donald Wuerl, was aware of the sanctions, or he wasn’t. (Read more from “This Abuse Scandal Leads All the Way to the Vatican” HERE)

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