Vatican excommunicates former ambassador to US

ROME (AP) — The Vatican excommunicated its former ambassador to Washington on Friday after finding him guilty of schism, an inevitable outcome for Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. The conservative had become one of Pope Francis’s most vocal critics and a symbol of the polarization of the Catholic Church in the United States and beyond.

Once enjoying the support of the Vatican and American church hierarchy, the Italian archbishop has alienated many by cultivating a fringe following while deepening conspiracy theories about everything from the coronavirus pandemic to what he has called the Great Reset and Russia's war in Ukraine.

The Vatican's doctrine office announced the sanction after a meeting of its members on Thursday and informed Vigano of its decision on Friday.

He cited Vigano's public refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with members of the Church subject to him, and of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council.

The excommunication that Vigano automatically incurs because of his office formally places him out of communion with the Church and cannot celebrate or receive its sacraments. The crime of schism occurs when someone withdraws from submission to the Pope or from the communion of Catholics subject to him.

Unlike defrocking, a punitive measure that restores a priest to his lay status, excommunication is considered a medical punishment and is handed out in the hope that those who have incurred it will repent and return to communion. If that happens, the Holy See can lift the punishment.

Schisms, which have been common in the history of the Church for 2,000 years, are considered particularly dangerous because they threaten the unity of the Church.

Vigano’s dire statements about the current state of the Church, amplified on Catholic social media and by ideologically sympathetic bloggers on both sides of the Atlantic, were an exaggerated version of the divide that separates American ultraconservatives from Pope Francis. And while Vigano enjoyed widespread support from the bishops early in his career, many of them quietly distanced themselves as his views became more extreme.

The Italian prelate, who has not been seen in public since 2018, knew the declaration of schism would come after the Vatican informed him of the criminal process launched against him last month. He defied this by saying it was an honor and refused to appear in person, defend himself or submit a written defense.

On June 20, Vigano issued a lengthy public statement refusing to recognize the authority of the Vatican doctrinal office that claims to judge me, nor that of its prefect, nor that of the man who appointed him.

He did not respond directly to the declaration of schism Friday on X, his usual forum. Shortly before the Vatican decree was made public, he announced that he would celebrate a Mass Friday for those who support him and ask for donations.

Vigano burst onto the public scene in 2012, during the first so-called Vatileaks scandal, when Pope Benedict XVI's butler leaked the pontiff's private papers to an Italian journalist in an attempt to draw attention to corruption within the Holy See.

In some of the leaked letters, Vigano, then the number two in the Vatican City State administration, begged the pope not to be transferred after he exposed corruption in the awarding of Vatican contracts that cost the Holy See millions of euros (dollars).

The pleas had no effect. By the time the letters were published, Vigano had been appointed Vatican ambassador to the United States, a prestigious post that nevertheless took him away from Rome and out of the running for cardinal.

Vigano re-emerged on the international stage during Pope Francis’ 2015 visit to the United States, which he helped organize as nuncio. All was well until Vigano arranged for Kim Davis, a Kentucky employee at the heart of the same-sex marriage debate in the United States, to be at the Vatican residence to greet Francis, along with many others.

After the visit, Davis and her lawyers claimed that the meeting with Pope Francis amounted to a vindication of her cause, which denies same-sex marriage licenses. The Vatican later reversed the situation, saying she had simply been part of a group of supporters, but that the only private audience Pope Francis had in Washington was with a small group of people, including a gay couple.

But Vigano's deception in inviting Davis to meet the pope put the prelate and the pontiff on a collision course that exploded in August 2018.

At the time, the American church was reeling from a new chapter in its clergy sex abuse scandal: One of the church's most senior officials, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, was accused of sexually assaulting a minor, and a Pennsylvania grand jury launched a devastating investigation into decades of abuse and cover-ups.

As Pope Francis wrapped up a tense visit to Ireland, Vigano published an 11-page article accusing him and a long line of U.S. and Vatican officials of covering up for McCarrick. Specifically, Vigano accused Pope Francis of exonerating McCarrick from sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI and called on him to resign over accusations that have created the biggest crisis of Francis’ then-young pontificate.

Pope Francis quickly authorized an internal investigation into McCarrick. The report, released in 2020, confirmed that a generation of church leaders, including Pope John Paul II, had turned a blind eye to McCarrick’s misconduct. It largely spared Pope Francis, who eventually defrocked the cleric.

But the report also faults Vigano for failing to investigate new allegations against McCarrick or enforce Vatican restrictions against him when the Vatican had specifically ordered him to do so.

At this point, Vigano’s accusations against Francis became more outrageous, endorsing conspiracy theories about coronavirus vaccines, appearing at far-right political rallies in the United States via video, supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine and, ultimately, refusing to recognize Francis as pope.

Massimo Faggioli, a theologian at Villanova University, said that while many U.S. bishops vouched for Vigano's integrity when he first made statements about McCarrick in 2018, his statements in subsequent years have led some of them to take more cautious positions.

In an essay in the French daily La Croix, Faggioli also noted that Vigano had the apparently unintended effect of integrating another schismatic group, the Society of Saint Pius X, which also rejects the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the meetings of the 1960s that modernized the church.

However, the society known as the SSPX, founded by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1969, has distanced itself from Vigano and his rejection of the legitimacy of Francis' pontificate, saying it did not venture down that perilous path.

Vigano's positions make Lefebvre and the SSPX appear as center-right Catholics, not the extreme traditionalists they really are, Faggioli writes. This speaks volumes about the ground that is shifting under the feet of Vatican II Catholics.

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