New US Bishops’ President Distances Himself from Viganò

Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City was elected president of the US bishops' conference on Tuesday. This was widely expected given his role as conference secretary and his long-standing membership of various committees.

Coakley won by only 128 to 109 votes over Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas. The surprise was how close Flores came to Coakley.

Both Coakley and Flores, who serves a border diocese, are champions for illegal immigrants.

On 12 November, OSVNews.com asked Archbishop Coakley, the newly elected president, about his support for the former US nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Viganò, in a 2018 letter.

Monsignor Coakley replied: “I didn’t know Archbishop Viganò other than what I knew of him from walking these halls here at bishops’ meetings. He was always a gentleman, he was always supportive, he always showed an interest in how things are going in our dioceses.

My comments when he was initially being criticized, and allegations being leveled against him, were meant to convey that that certainly has not been my experience of the man. And I just didn’t want to jump to conclusions before all of the information was available.

So I think, in retrospect, I think a lot more about his views became apparent in subsequent months and years, which I could certainly not support or countenance. But I didn’t have that information.

I didn’t know him in that way, what his views were, when I made those comments, which have been thrown back in my face numerous times subsequently and used against me.

I was simply trying to protect the reputation of a man who I knew to be a churchman who had served the conference of Catholic bishops here in the United States admirably and faithfully. I didn’t know him in any other way.”

Picture: Paul Coakley © wikicommons CC BY-SA, #newsXnwvfavrpk