Did Pope Francis cover up sexual abuse allegations made against an Archbishop? And if he did, is he not just as guilty for the crimes committed following the allegations?
The Vatican’s retired ambassador to the United States accused senior Vatican officials of knowing as early as 2000 that the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, regularly invited seminarians into his bed but was made a cardinal regardless.
The letter, an extraordinary j’accuse from a one-time Holy See diplomat, also accuses Pope Francis of being informed of McCarrick’s penchant for young seminarians in 2013 but of having rehabilitated him — a claim of cover-up against the pope himself.
The National Catholic Register and another conservative site, LifeSiteNews, published the letter attributed to Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano on Sunday as the pope was wrapping up a two-day visit to Ireland dominated by the clerical sex abuse and cover-up scandal.
Vigano, 77, a conservative whose hard-line anti-gay views are well known, urged the reformist pope to resign over the issue and what he called the “conspiracy of silence” about McCarrick. He and the pope have long been on opposite ideological sides, with the pope more a pastor and Vigano more a cultural warrior.
The Vatican didn’t immediately comment on the letter or confirm its authenticity.
In it, Vigano accused the former Vatican secretaries of state under the previous two popes of having ignored detailed denunciations against McCarrick for years. He said Pope Benedict XVI eventually sanctioned McCarrick in 2009 or 2010 to a lifetime of penance and prayer, but that Francis subsequently rehabilitated him.
Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation as cardinal last month, after a U.S. church investigation determined that an accusation he had sexually abused a minor was credible.
Since then, another man has come forward saying McCarrick began molesting him starting when he was 11, and several former seminarians have said McCarrick abused and harassed them when they were in seminary. The accusations have led to a crisis in confidence in the U.S. hierarchy, because it was apparently an open secret that McCarrick regularly invited seminarians to his New Jersey beach house, and into his bed.
Coupled with the devastating allegations of sex abuse and cover-up in a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report — which found that 300 priests had abused more than 1,000 children over 70 years in six dioceses — the scandal has led to calls for heads to roll and for a full Vatican investigation into who knew what and when about McCarrick.
Source: Time
The whole Vatican establishment should resign. They have all known about this and some among those who have risen in the ranks will most definitely have been perpetrators themselves. I do not agree with Francis on much but the hypocrites trying to take him down are only trying to save their own skins.
‘resign’????????????? he should be castrated then quartered by horses!
THE POPE ALSO …