In an interview with the daily newspaper "Il Messagggero" published on Tuesday, Vigano said that he did not want to end up like the Australian Curia Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023) or the former Vatican ambassador to the USA, Pietro Sambi (1938-2011). Both had died during surgical interventions.
McCarrick no longer fit to stand trial
Sambi was Vigano's predecessor as US nuncio. Both were involved in canonical investigations against the former Archbishop of Washington D.C., Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. He was accused of numerous cases of sexual abuse.
The former cardinal (94) was removed from the clergy in 2019 and is no longer fit to stand trial due to advanced dementia. During his active time, he was one of the most influential men in the Catholic Church in the USA and belonged to its progressive wing.
In 2018, Vigano publicly accused Pope Francis of not taking consistent action against McCarrick. In the interview, he also hinted that the cardinal had long been very influential in the Vatican thanks to donations. Francis owed his election as Pope to him. The American had also been helpful in the realisation of the secret agreement between Beijing and the Vatican.
According to Vigano, this is why Francis held on to McCarrick until 2019. He then removed him from the priesthood without a trial. In this way, he tried to save the reputation of his pontificate and at the same time avoid a trial with embarrassing testimonies.
Vigano has been accusing Pope Francis since 2018
Vigano resigned from his position as papal ambassador in 2016 for reasons of age. As a retiree, from 2018 he published his accusations against Pope Francis for his behaviour in the McCarrick case and called for his resignation. In the following years, Vigano moved closer to conspiracy theory and traditionalist circles on the fringes of the Catholic Church. He criticised the Pope's actions against the followers of the Latin Old Mass and the Church's opening up to homosexual couples.
After he publicly accused Francis of not being the legitimate pope, the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith opened canonical proceedings against Vigano and on 5 July announced his excommunication and thus his exclusion from the ecclesial community. The offence was schism. In the interview that has now been published, Vigano described the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) as a cancer that had infected the entire Catholic Church.