The fight between the far right Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and Pope Francis, whom Vigano accuses of covering up sexual abuse committed by Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, is heating up and lots of reputations are being sullied. While Francis would not respond to the charge, his aide Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect for the Congregation of Bishops, is hitting back hard, calling Viganò’s charges “false” and “abhorrent” and producing documentation that Pope John Paul II, now a canonized saint in the Catholic Church, received information about McCarrick’s sexual misconduct with seminarians in 2000 and yet elevated him to cardinal in 2001—long before Francis became pope.
Responding to Viganò’s charge that the cover-up was due to a cabal of gay people and gay sympathizers in the Vatican, Ouellet wrote that despite the fact that there are some who engage in behavior “contrary to the values of the gospel,” that does not justify declaring a whole group of people, including the current pope, “unworthy and complicit.” Oullett charged that Viganò, an ally of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both more conservative than the current pontiff, was engaged in a “political plot” to harm Francis and “the communion of the Church.”
