Vatican summons Monsignor Viganò on schism accusation

  VATICAN CITY -- Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò, a conservative priest, has been summoned to the Vatican after being accused by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of inciting schism within the Roman Catholic Church, the Holy See has said.

  Viganò, the former Apolistic Nuncio in the USA between 2011 and 2016, has criticised Pope Francis on multiple occasions and called for his resignation. 

  He has been accused of making “public statements which result in denial of the elements necessary to maintain communion with the catholic church: denial of the legitimacy of Pope Francis, breaking the communion with him and the rejection of the Second Vatican council.”

  Viganò, however, responded to these accusations which were presented to him “with a simple email”.

  “I presume that the sentence will have already been prepared given that this is an extrajudicial trial. I consider the accusations against me an honour,” the priest said.

   “It is necessary that the Episcopate, the clergy and the people of God seriously ask themselves if it would be coherent with the profession of the catholic faith to passively assist in the systematic destruction of the Church by its leaders just as other subversives are destroying civil society.” 

  “No catholic worthy of the name can be in communion with this ‘Bergoglian Church’ because it acts in clear discontinuity and rupture with all the Popes in history and with the Church of Christ.” 

  Viganò went on to explain that the Council “represents the ideological, theological, moral, and liturgical cancer in which the Bergoglian ‘synodal church’ is a necessary metastasis.” 

  Clashes first arose between Viganò and the Vatican when the priest was serving as Secretary of the Governorate of the Vatican City state. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone removed Viganò from Rome at the end of 2011 and Pope Benedict appointed him Apolisitic Nuncio in Washington. Despite Viganò not wanting to leave Rome, Benedict did not go back on his decision. When Pope Francis was appointed, he did not move Viganò from Washington, sending him into retirement at 75. 

lw