Vatican puts archbishop on trial for remarks about pope

A high-ranking Catholic official faces a trial and excommunication for questioning the legitimacy of Pope Francis and parts of the Second Vatican Council.

“I have been summoned to the Palace of the Holy Office on June 20, in person or represented by a canon lawyer,” Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said last week, according to Catholic news websites. “I assume that the sentence has already been prepared, given that it is an extrajudicial process.”Top of FormBottom of Form

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has yet to make a public statement on the proceedings against Viganò, according to Vatican News.

“Archbishop Viganò has taken some attitudes and some actions for which he must answer,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said “I am very sorry, because I always appreciated him as a great worker, very faithful to the Holy See, someone who was, in a certain sense, also an example. When he was apostolic nuncio, he did good work. I don’t know what happened.”

Viganò has made headlines in recent years by calling for the resignation of Pope Francis, to whom he refers to using his given name, Jorge Mario Bergoglio. In 2020, Viganò accused a cabal of leaders within the Catholic Church of allowing “heresy, sodomy and corruption” to run rampant in the institution. In 2018, Viganò wrote a letter accusing dozens of former and current high-level Catholic officials of covering up the accusations of sexual abuse against disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

In a scathing op-ed for LifeSiteNews in the wake of the guidance, Viganò accused Pope Francis and his allies of serving the devil.

“The delirious Declaration Fiducia Supplicans, recently published by the parody of the former Holy Office renamed the Dicastery, definitively pierces the veil of hypocrisy and deception of the Bergoglian hierarchy, showing these false shepherds for what they really are: servants of Satan and his most zealous allies, beginning with the usurper who sits — an abomination of desolation -0 on the throne of Peter,” he wrote.

–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice