INTERVIEW BY RAYMOND ARROYO, EWTN TO ARCHBISHOP CARLO MARIA VIGANÒ
Your Excellency, the report claims you “did not come forward” to present evidence for this Vatican inquiry: were you asked to provide information? Did anyone reach out to you?
I am surprised to discover that a Report in which I am mentioned 306 times accuses me of not having presented myself to testify in this Vatican inquiry on Theodore McCarrick. But according to the norm of canon law, the calling of witnesses is the responsibility of the one who is in charge of the process, on the basis of evidence gathered in the investigation phase.
My first intervention about McCarrick, which I made as Delegate for the Pontifical Representations in the Secretariat of State, goes back to December 6, 2006, following a report of the then-Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi. Subsequently, in 2008, I presented a second Memorandum that reported facts of such gravity and in such detail that it led me to recommend that McCarrick be deposed as Cardinal and that he be reduced to the lay state. My Testimony of August 2018 is known to everyone, as well as my subsequent declarations.
It is completely incomprehensible and anomalous that it was not considered opportune to call upon me to testify, but even more disturbing that this deliberate omission was then used against me. And let it not be said to me that I had made myself untraceable: the Secretariat of State has my personal email address, which is still active.
On the other hand, just as I was not consulted for the drafting of the McCarrick Report, so also in 2012, the three cardinals whom Benedict XVI placed in charge of the investigation of Vatileaks 1, did not call upon me to give testimony, even though I was also personally involved. Only after my explicit request, did Cardinal Julian Herranz, the head of the Commission, permit me to give a deposition, with these words: “If you really want to...!”
Furthermore, it also seems significant to me that James Grein, the only victim of McCarrick’s sexual molestations who had the courage to denounce him publicly, does not appear in the Report, and that there is no trace of his testimony, in which he would have also reported the trip he made with McCarrick to St. Gallen at the end of the 1950s.
From the public statements of James Grein, it is clear that the beginning of McCarrick’s climb – he was then a young, newly ordained priest – coincided with that visit to Switzerland, to a monastery that was later the site of the meetings of the conspirators of the so-called “St. Gallen mafia.” According to the declarations of the deceased Cardinal Godfried Danneels, that group of prelates decided to support the election of Bergoglio both after the death of John Paul II as well as during the conclave that followed the controversial resignation of Benedict XVI.
I recall that during a conference at Villanova University on October 11, 2013, then-Cardinal McCarrick admitted to having supported the election of Cardinal Bergoglio at the beginning of the General Congregations prior to the conclave that had been held a few months earlier [in March 2013 chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/71881.html">Follieri boasted.
The same connections, the same complicities, the same acquaintances always recur: McCarrick, Clinton, Biden, the Democrats, and the Modernists, along with a procession of homosexuals and molesters that is not irrelevant.
With regard to Benedict XVI, the ones who had daily, direct access to the Pope were the Secretary of State Bertone and the Substitute Sandri, who were able to control and filter information about McCarrick and exert pressure on the Holy Father.
Once again, the Report speaks for itself. The one who presented the question directly to Pope Benedict XVI was Cardinal Bertone, who, contrary to what I had repeatedly proposed – namely, that the very grave and detailed accusations against McCarrick required an exemplary canonical process leading to his removal from the College of Cardinals and his reduction to the lay state – led Pope Benedict to decide that no canonical process should be undertaken nor should any canonical sanctions be prescribed, but that instead “a simple appeal to McCarrick’s conscience and ecclesial spirit” would be made.
And here yet another flagrant contradiction appears evident: how is it possible to reconcile a simple appeal to conscience with the formal instructions that were given both to Nuncio Sambi and to me, according to which McCarrick could not reside in the seminary where he was living, could not participate in public activities, could not travel, and had to lead a retired life of prayer and penance?
The corruption of the highest levels of the Vatican is so evident that it leads one to consider the Report as an unworthy attempt to make Bergoglio appear absolutely alien to the manipulations of the Curia, indeed as a sort of implacable persecutor of the corrupt, while the evidence of the facts demonstrates the opposite. I would say that Bergoglio is to the deep church as Biden is to the deep state...
I would like to also note that the fact of blaming John Paul II for the appointment of McCarrick despite the negative opinion of the Congregation of Bishops and its Prefect Cardinal Re could be applied also to Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself, about whom the Superior General of the Jesuits expressed strong reservations. If Wojtyla made a mistake with McCarrick and for this reason is considered implicitly responsible for the scandals that occurred, what prevents this judgment from also being extended to the promotion of Bergoglio as Archbishop of Buenos Aires and then as Cardinal? Let’s remember that in the Consistory of 2001, in addition to McCarrick and Bergoglio, other leading members of the Saint Gallen Mafia received the red hat...
Is there anything else we should cover?
In conclusion I would like to quote a recent article by Riccardo Cascioli, adopting his lucid judgment as my own:
Although the figure of a McCarrick who was a serial predator emerges from the Report, no great reaction was triggered until 2017, when the first report of the abuse of a minor arrived. [...] In practice we are told that “immoral behavior with adults,” while certainly not a good thing, is however in the end something that is tolerated. The real alarm, the one that provides for penalties, even heavy ones, is sounded only if the one abused is a minor. As if the dozens and dozens of future priests who shared a bed with McCarrick, and who were thus for the most part condemned to an unbalanced priestly life, didn’t really count for much. As if the moral devastation and the destruction of faith caused by a bishop-predator – lost vocations, priests who in turn repeated the abuse, episcopal appointments distorted by pathological ties – were all only a minor problem.
[…] It was deliberately ignored that what permitted McCarrick’s irresistible rise is a system of power also known as the gay lobby, which favors the appointment and career of bishops with certain characteristics. [...]
No, there really is no sign at all that the Church has learned anything from the McCarrick affair; there is rather the sense that one person was made to pay so that others could quietly continue. And in the meantime advancing the idea that if a priest has homosexual tendencies, it’s no problem.
In this grotesque farce, now cloaked in a false semblance of legalism, there is no hesitation to drag the entire Church through the mud – its prestige before the world, its authority over the faithful – in order to save the now-compromised image of corrupt, unworthy, depraved prelates. I limit myself to observing that even now, in the Vatican, Bergoglio still surrounds himself with notorious homosexuals and people with gravely compromised reputations. This is the most blatant disavowal of Bergoglio’s supposed moralizing work.
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