By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Catholics in the pews and even priests
in the Vatican are confused about the long document Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano published
claiming Pope Francis turned a blind eye to information he had about the sexual
misconduct of now-Archbishop Theodore
E. McCarrick.
Pope Francis’ response to journalists Aug. 26 that they should read
the document carefully, investigate and make their own decisions was not a big
help.
Littered with repeated accusations about a “homosexual
current” of cardinals and archbishops close to Pope Francis, the
document’s central claim is that Pope Francis knew about Archbishop McCarrick’s
abusive behavior as early as June 2013 and did nothing about it.
In fact, Archbishop Vigano said, Pope Francis, “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.”
Archbishop Vigano states that in “2009 or 2010”
Pope Benedict XVI “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.”
But such a sanction was never announced publicly.
It could be that Pope Benedict did not want to draw
attention to behavior that was not public knowledge. But, as one canon lawyer
at the Vatican told Catholic News Service Aug. 28, “at best it’s weird, an
anomaly” not to publish a sanction that has public consequences, such as forbidding
the cardinal to celebrate Mass publicly or make public appearances.
Yet, Cardinal McCarrick continued to celebrate Mass publicly
in the United States and to visit the Vatican, even being part of group
audiences with Pope Benedict and later Pope Francis. Also strange is the fact
that Archbishop Vigano himself appeared at public events with then-Cardinal
McCarrick, including at a May 2,
2012, gala dinner of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United
States, which honored Cardinal McCarrick as a “Pontifical Ambassador for
Mission.”
Oblate Father
Andrew Small, director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, told
Catholic News Service Aug. 29 that neither Archbishop Vigano nor anyone from
the nunciature tried to dissuade the societies from giving the honor to
Cardinal McCarrick.
Clearly, if there were sanctions, they were not enforced.
But the question remains, were there sanctions and did Pope Francis know about
them before this summer when
the Archdiocese of New York announced an investigation found credible
evidence that Archbishop McCarrick sexually abused a minor?
Cardinal
Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops, and many individual bishops have asked for a thorough
investigation of the Archbishop McCarrick situation, including Archbishop
Vigano’s claims.
“The questions raised deserve answers that are
conclusive and based on evidence,” Cardinal DiNardo said Aug. 27.
“Without those answers, innocent men may be tainted by false accusations
and the guilty may be left to repeat sins of the past.”
In the eyes of many, the fact that Archbishop Vigano
consulted with and was even assisted by journalists and bloggers who have
worked publicly to oppose and discredit Pope Francis does not help his cause.
One of those involved was Aldo Maria Valli, author of the blog “Duc in
Altum,” which has been very critical of Pope Francis since the publication
of “Amoris Laetitia” on the family. Valli wrote Aug. 27 that
Archbishop Vigano called him more than a month ago wanting to talk to him.
Valli invited the archbishop to dinner at his home.
“He was worried about the church and feared that at its
top there were people who were not working to bring the Gospel of Jesus to
today’s men and women, but to sow confusion and give in to the logic of the
world,” Valli wrote.
As they walked to the archbishop’s car at the end of the
evening, Valli said Archbishop Vigano told him, “Don’t call me. I’ll get
in touch with you.”
A month later, the archbishop called again. And during
another dinner in the Valli home, “he cited the case of McCarrick, the
former cardinal held guilty of serious abuse, and he let it be known that
everyone — in the USA and the Vatican — knew about it for a long time, for years.
And yet they covered it up.”
The archbishop said he would send a document to Valli to
read and to publish or not as he saw fit. Valli said he asked if it would be an
exclusive, and Archbishop Vigano told him, “No. I will give it to another
Italian blogger, an Englishman, an American and a Canadian. There will be
translations in English and Spanish.”
They spoke later and agreed on the date and time of
publication, Valli said. “He decided on Sunday, Aug. 26, because the pope,
returning from Dublin, would have an opportunity to reply, responding to the
journalists’ questions on the plane.”
The other Italian blogger and papal critic, former
journalist Marco Tosatti, told the Associated Press that he helped Archbishop
Vigano edit the document for publication. The meeting Aug. 22, he said, came
after a similar, earlier phone call and meeting like Archbishop Vigano had with
Valli.
After the Pennsylvania grand jury report came out, Tosatti
told AP that he
told Vigano, “I think that if you want to say something, now is the
moment, because everything is going upside-down in the United States. He said
‘OK.'”
The National Catholic Register, which is owned by EWTN, and
the Canada-based LifeSiteNews also received the text in advance. The
LifeSiteNews Rome-based writer did the official translation of Archbishop
Vigano’s document into English.
The Register reported Aug. 25 that it had “independently
confirmed that the allegations against McCarrick were certainly known to
Benedict, and the pope emeritus remembers instructing Cardinal Bertone to
impose measures but cannot recall their exact nature.” Cardinal Tarcisio
Bertone was Vatican secretary of state.
But Archbishop Georg Ganswein, the retired pope’s personal
secretary, told the German newspaper Die Tagespost Aug. 28 that Pope Benedict did not and would not
comment on Archbishop Vigano’s document. The Register then replied that it
never said Pope Benedict had read Archbishop Vigano’s report or that he had
commented on it, only that Pope Benedict remembered wanting to impose sanctions
of some sort.
Some things are clear: Archbishop Vigano’s document was
prepared in consultation with at least one of the bloggers and journalists who
were the first to publish it; the archbishop’s document is filled with rhetoric
indicating a broader agenda than just ending clerical sexual abuse; and the
release of the document was coordinated and timed to have maximum impact.
What is not clear is if there were sanctions imposed on
then-Cardinal McCarrick and, if there were, did Pope Francis know about them.
And as of Aug. 29, neither Pope Francis nor the Vatican press office has provided
an answer.
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Follow Wooden on Twitter: @Cindy_Wooden
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