The Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith has begun an extrajudicial penal trial to determine if Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former nuncio to the United States, is guilty of schism, the archbishop said on social media. Source: OSV News.
In a June 20 post on X, the archbishop published a letter he said he received from the dicastery over email informing him of the trial.
The letter, written on the dicastery’s stationary and signed by Msgr John Kennedy, secretary for the dicastery’s section for discipline, said the archbishop was summoned to appear at the dicastery’s office yesterday to hear “the accusations and evidence against him regarding the crime of schism of which he is accused”.
It continued to detail the specific elements of schism, accusing the archbishop of “public statements which result in a denial of the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church: denial of the legitimacy of Pope Francis, rupture of communion with him, and rejection of the Second Vatican Council.”
The Vatican press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, Vatican News, which is also part of the Dicastery for Communications, published an article on the archbishop’s post quoting Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin from the sidelines of an event at the Pontifical Urbanian University in Rome yesterday.
He stated that Archbishop Viganò had developed “certain attitudes and gestures which he must respond to” and that he will have the opportunity to defend himself.
Reacting to the letter he received from the dicastery about the trial, the archbishop wrote, “I regard the accusations against me as an honour”.
The accusation against him issued for questioning both the legitimacy of Pope Francis and the Second Vatican Council confirms that the “synodal church” promoted by the Pope is the metastasis of the “ideological, theological, moral, and liturgical cancer” of Vatican II, he wrote in a blog post published yesterday.
FULL STORY
Vatican accuses former US nuncio of schism, begins trial (By Justin McLellan, OSV News)
RELATED COVERAGE
Viganò charged with schism, calls Vat II and Pope Francis ‘cancer’ (The Pillar)
