Vatican Excommunicates Far-Right Archbishop Who Once Attempted To Spring Kim Davis On Pope Francis

July 5, 2024 Christianists, Religion

The National Catholic Reporter reports:

Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the disgraced former papal nuncio to the United States who questioned the legitimacy of Pope Francis and the authority of the Second Vatican Council, has been found guilty of schism and excommunicated, the Vatican announced on July 5.

“His public statements manifesting his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with the members of the Church subject to him, and of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council are well known,” stated a Vatican bulletin that announced the ruling.

The decision of Viganò’s excommunication was widely expected following the archbishop’s June 20 announcement that he had been charged with schism by the Dicastery for the Doctrine for the Faith and that he would not be cooperating with the Vatican penal process.

The Washington Post reports:

Viganò’s punishment suggests that Francis, who has faced conservative criticism since early in his papacy, may be losing patience with his sharpest critics in the church hierarchy who have challenged his papal authority in sometimes shocking and irreverent terms.

It is also an indication of how Viganò has morphed over the years from a being a critic of the pope and the church’s shortcomings on dealing with clerical abuse into a fringe conservative firebrand who has embraced conspiracy theories and recently retweeted a post from Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), claiming that “the covid vaccines are killing people.”

He does not immediately lose his clerical title, though such a step — known as defrocking — could follow if he is deemed to be unrepentant, experts say.

The Independent reports:

Vigano reappeared on the scene during Francis’ 2015 visit to the United States, which as nuncio Vigano helped organize. Everything was going fine until Vigano arranged for Kim Davis, a Kentucky clerk at the center of the U.S. gay marriage debate, to be among a small group of people at the Vatican residence to greet Francis.

After the visit ended, Davis and her lawyers claimed the encounter with Francis amounted to an affirmation of her cause. The Vatican later turned that claim on its head when it released footage of what it said was the “only” private audience Francis had in Washington: with a small group of people that included a gay couple.

Vigano was shitcanned as nuncio due to his Davis stunt.

We last heard from Vigano when he appeared on Steve Bannon’s show to attack the usual far-right targets such as George Soros, Hunter Biden, the World Economic Forum, NATO, the Davos Forum, and the European Union.

In 2021, Vigano claimed that COVID is “fake” and that vaccines are designed to “contact trace” humans with a “quantum link of pulsed frequencies.”

In 2022, he backed Putin in his war against Ukraine, declaring that the US “deep state” had forced the invasion.

In 2020, he declared that Pope Francis was “in the clutches of the gay lobby” and seeks a “global dictatorship.”

In 2016, he denounced LGBTQ rights as “demonic.”

His Wikipedia entry goes on for several thousand words about his long history of batshittery.

Vigano reacted this morning with a money beg.



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