Posted on 08/26/2018 12:10:00 AM PDT by dangus
[ The testimony is far worse than the title suggests. Nuncio Archibishop Vigano claims that McCarrick was part of an inner circle of abuse enablers which got Francis elected in the first place, and which included Secretary of States Bertone and Angelo Sodano.]
1 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. 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.
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.
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.”
Confession does not absolve if there is no actual repentance.
I’m going with “homoclerical demonocracy scandal.”
This should be in Breaking News. It has the potential to break the Communist / homosexual infiltration of US Catholic clergy. This story is at least as big as McCain’s death.
I’m not elated. The sodomafia is out in full force on social media defending the homoclerical demonocracy. They are tearing at the vitals of a 77 year-old man, Archbishop Vigano.
I pray he has documentation. And a bodyguard.
I agree, I don't think this is referencing a "Black Mass" in the Hollywood sense. But that is the danger in such things as this....Satan lurks in the open nowadays. 100 years ago we were warned about modernity. Back then, entertainment and society marched to a generally upright zeitgeist...modernists were in the shadows. Now, they have a stranglehold and NORMAL PEOPLE are the weird ones. Nobody has to say a Black Mass in the dark today...you can do it on pay-per-view and make a few bucks while MSNBC does a flowery story about the whole thing.
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.
The Catholic church doesn't consider "the church" to be an organization in the sense that Protestants do. The RCC considers "the church" to be the entire mass of baptized Christians (even Protestants), including those living on earth now, and all others "elsewhere". Another phrase for it is "the Body of Christ".
When I posted this last night, referencing the story (and translation of Vigano's document) to Lifesite News, I also tagged it as Breaking News.
When my posting "went live," it was indeed in the Breaking News section. Shortly thereafter it disappeared from Breaking News, though my posting remains down in the que.
Evidently, some mod disagreed with me (and also with you!) regarding the Breaking News aspect of this story.
It's going to be instructive to watch and to see if this story has legs. If it does not, if instead the howling mob in social media which is now stampeding anyone who gives credence to Vigano - if that mob prevails, we will know just how far, deep, and entrenched the gay mafia is within the Roman Church.
If, on the other hand, Vigano's cleansing of his conscience leads to similar challenges from among the ranks of the Roman shepherds, those men not yet ensnared in the compromises and corruption - well, as others have already said in the comments above, we're watching a humongous hinge in history beginning to turn right before our eyes.
Thanks for the clarification. This is why us non catholics are in difficult waters when we comment on this.
I believe this pertains to Papa B's order that McCarrick have no active ministry but spend the rest of his live in prayer and penance.
Well, he would have known what BXVI was doing. Benedict laicized something like 800 priests in countries all over the world. He also retired a huge number of Bishops who were involved in devious things. He had gotten McCarrick out and removed his ecclesiastical honors and had him in isolation, basically. Francis brought McCarrick back almost immediately upon getting rid of BXVI.
Our Lord was unmarried as was St Paul.
While that is true, and frankly fundamentally more important, objectively it is more difficult to judge. IIRC there is no jurisdiction to absolve an accomplice accept in cases of death.
I see very little media coverage
I grew up Catholic and tried to return. The one priest I confided in wanted badly to discuss sex and porn. I wouldn’t do it.
I think, contrary to the letter, that Christ has indeed abandoned the church and it is corrupt and sinful through and through.
Without fail, my friends who attended Catholic school with me, the boys, now men, have told me about being approached or molested by these priestly fiends. One of my friends, a respected businessman, just recently told me about being cornered by some high muckety muck “priest” in the administration at Notre Dame while he was a student there. One of my nephews, a former alter boy, has “come out” as gay. Another of my friends’ son has “come out”—also a former alter boy. Were they molested? We don’t know, but they sure could have been. A large number of boys who come out were molested as children. Don’t get me wrong, I have withheld any judgment of gay because I don’t have enough information to make an opinion and I don’t believe the garbage from what is said to be “Bible”.
The Catholic Church in my opinion, which I get is worth nothing, is destroyed. Nothing but a sex cult.
It is disgusting.
This is the type of thing that may end up forcing Pope Francis to abdicate the Papacy.
Except Christ specifically said that such would never happen. There have been parts of the Church that were corrupt and sinful throughout her history. And there have been parts that were faithful to Christ and His word.
yes.
It is all the Christifideles (Christ-faithful people) united around their still-faithful or their contrite-and-recovered bishops.
That includes those still in this world, and those in the world to come.
I'm no canon lawyer (Laus tibi, Christe) but I will look it up when I have time.
Keep praying because we aren't out of the woods yet, and Viganò could mysteriously catch cancer, if you know what I mean.
So pray and pray and fast and fast. I'm preaching to myself: I need to fast. Some of these fiends are not driven out except by prayer and fasting.
In the meantime:
NaNa Na Na, NaNa NaNa, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye (click!!)
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Grant this, O lord.
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