The Testimony of Archbishop Carlo Viganò

In all places, Christ is only one, and on that account we cannot receive him against others or without others. Precisely because it is the whole Christ, the undivided and indivisible Christ, who gives himself in the Eucharist, for that very reason the Eucharist can be celebrated rightly only if it is celebrated with the whole Church. 

—Pope Benedict XVI, ‘A Church of All Times and Places,’ God Is Near Us

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The former Vatican nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Viganò, recently wrote an eleven-page letter on the scandal surrounding ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s history of sexual harassment and abuse. It names names among the Curia of those who covered up for the disgraced prelate, a list embracing even Pope Francis himself, and calls on a multitude of them, including His Holiness, to resign their offices.

Archbishop Viganò is a man of unimpeachable integrity, with full access to the information he claims to be testifying about, whose courageous publication is (as he says in the letter) an act of conscience, resorted to after a long series of failed attempts to get a slothful and corrupt Holy See to put a stop to McCarrick’s behavior. Or: Archbishop Viganò is noticeably partisan, gets certain verifiable facts wrong in his letter, has been implicated in abuse cover-ups of his own (involving John Nienstedt, who at the time was Archbishop of Minneapolis), is clearly hostile to the Pope, and certainly took his sweet time in getting conscientious enough to make this information public if he’s been trying to deal with McCarrick’s behavior since 2006. I've heard both accounts of the man and don't altogether know what to think of him.

But I have read His Excellency’s letter. At first I wasn’t going to, being weary of all the … everything, but I eventually decided that I needed to analyze it for myself, especially if I was going to write about it.

His Holiness specifically declined to reply to it, at least for now, inviting journalists to come to their own conclusions about it. This baffling response has been read as everything from a contemptuous sneer at the anguish of the Church, to a gentle confidence that the letter will collapse under its own distortions. I’ve been swept along in the firestorm that’s succeeded the publication, like everybody else on Catholic social media. Even if the Pope is as guilty as the Viganò letter implies, I wonder whether his response is not the wisest—not for him necessarily, but for people in general and to the situation in general.

But, being a loudmouth, I will make the following points. I will leave aside the allegations that have been made against the archbishop himself, since I don’t understand them very well and they have been disputed in any case.

A number of sources in the letter are, well, hearsay. Gabriel Montalvo and Pietro Sambi, the two apostolic nuncios before Viganò himself, are dead; a number of intermediary sources between Viganò and the assertions he makes are cited—Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, Cardinal Marc Ouellet—but this is precisely a statement that Archbishop Viganò himself was not an immediate witness to the matters he is discussing: there is every possibility of even quite innocent misunderstandings here. There is a constant refrain of ‘I do not know’ and ‘I believe that,’ ‘it is legitimate to think so’ and ‘as seems certain,’ ‘would anybody believe him’ and ‘as if he had already known.’ It all may be grounds justifying an investigation but it is certainly nothing more than that. Without investigation and the evidence that it turns up, what these phrases indicate is not testimony, but gossip and speculation.

Some quite subjective assertions are also put forward. Archbishop Viganò says of His Holiness Francis that he ‘assailed me in a tone of reproach,’ he ‘asked me in a deceitful way’ about then-Cardinal McCarrick, and so on. These things could be true. Or, without even saying that Viganò is lying, it’s also perfectly possible that he misread the Pope’s intentions. He says in so many words that it was his first time meeting the man; is it possible that he misinterpreted his affect? It is legitimate to think so.

Others have noted certain difficulties with the factual claims made by Viganò, especially with respect to the sanctions allegedly imposed by Pope Benedict XVI on then-Cardinal McCarrick. Archbishop Viganò asserts that they were substantially the same as those that have since been imposed by Pope Francis. However, he doesn’t even profess to have learnt this from the Pope Emeritus, either at the time or since; he is repeating what he says Cardinal Re said to him (or at any rate, what he says he learned ‘through’ Re without further specification). Regardless, not only did McCarrick continue to live and work as though no sanctions had been imposed on him at all—which, to be sure, is not totally out of character for a man who so flagrantly violated his priestly and even his simply human obligations—yet he made multiple visits to Pope Benedict, during the time when the pontiff had allegedly banned him from traveling, and concelebrated Mass at the tomb of St Peter during the time when the Pope had allegedly banned him from public celebration entirely. Pope Emeritus Benedict’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, stated today that His Holiness has not (contrary to some reports) confirmed Viganò’s report in any way and will not publicly comment on his letter.

Moving forward, the archbishop does seem to indulge in several pretty boldly personal attacks. Of Cardinal Cupich, he writes that ‘one cannot fail to notice his ostentatious arrogance’; of Fr James Martin SJ that he is a ‘well-known activist who promotes the LGBT agenda, chosen to corrupt the young people who will soon gather in Dublin’; of Pope Francis, that he is ‘certainly not inspired by sound intentions and … love of the Church’ and that ‘It was only when he was forced … on the basis of media attention, that he took action [regarding McCarrick] to save his image’.

Not once is the possibility noted that His Holiness might have heard accusations but, for one reason or another, not believed them, or at least hesitated to believe them. St John Paul II was familiar with the accusations being leveled at Marcial Maciel Degollado, but he disbelieved them, because he was persuaded of Degollado’s sanctity, and took the accusations to be a smear campaign; is it so impossible that Pope Francis thought the same? And no, it doesn’t follow from this that Pope Francis was right—he clearly wasn’t—but Viganò’s apparent decision not to give him even the benefit of the doubt (despite his repeated ‘I do not know, we do not know, I do not know’) is not merely discourteous; it is unjust. It is not wisdom but rashness to leap to the ugliest explanation of someone’s actions.

Similarly, and although I am disgusted by Cardinal Wuerl’s conduct to date, I have to speak in his defense with respect to one of Viganò’s claims. The latter writes about ‘a morally unacceptable event authorized by the academic authorities of Georgetown University … The Cardinal told me that he knew nothing about it. … I subsequently learned that the event at Georgetown had taken place for seven years. But the Cardinal knew nothing about it!’ Well, for one thing, that is not actually so incredible; I imagine a lot of things take place in every diocese that the ordinary doesn’t follow closely, especially when they take place at institutions that, like Georgetown, are autonomous rather than governed by the Church. But all of that aside, we are never informed what this ‘morally unacceptable event’ was, and therefore cannot judge whether or to what extent Archbishop Viganò’s indignation is justified.

But the thing that struck me the most about this letter was how falsely it had been ‘advertised’ to me. Everything I had read said that it alluded to corroborating sources and gave verifying details. It has plenty of details, certainly, but of corroborating sources, I found little to none. A multitude of memos and personal letters are spoken about, but the archbishop never even says whether there are copies, let alone produces them or says where to find them. Dozens of accusations of corruption are made, but no court or ecclesiastical documents are produced in support of them; many charges of arrogance and lies are made, but no way of testing them is offered—except by bring the whole affair to trial, which is perfectly appropriate, but is not what Viganò has done. I dare say his letter could be used as a starting point for an investigation, but, as pure evidence, it’s lousy. Even if the archbishop is telling the truth as far as he knows it (which is perfectly possible; all of these difficulties could be the Rashomon Effect), would anybody believe that he is not motivated at least in part by a distrust of the Holy Father and a general hostility to gay priests, and that these enmities color his judgment?

None of this demonstrates that Pope Francis is innocent. But it is innocence, not guilt, which is presumed in a court of law. And there is every reason to cross-examine witnesses.

The more I look at this letter, the less confidence I have in it. Increasingly, I think that Pope Francis was right (and I find it odd, by the way, that the order of these sentences has been so frequently mixed up):

Read the document carefully and judge it for yourselves. I will not say one word on this. I think the document speaks for itself, and you have sufficient journalistic capacity to reach your own conclusions. It is an act of trust, when time will pass and you’ll draw the conclusions, maybe I will speak, but I’d like that you do this job in a professional way.

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