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Saturday, August 25, 2018

Viganò Goes "Nuclear" – Targeting Rome and US, Ex-Nuncio's "Saturday Night Massacre"

Even before last week's release of the Pennsylvania grand-jury report, several key US prelates privately told Whispers of their sense that the coming storm was already "worse than 2002 – because this time, it's about the bishops."

Suffice it to say, that feeling has become all the more profound amid the sudden development of this late Saturday – in an 11-page memo that can only be described as "nuclear," to say nothing of fresh fuel for the burgeoning crisis, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò (above), the now-retired Nuncio to the US who served in Washington from 2011-16, testified that he had informed the Pope in 2013 about then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick's harassment and abuse of seminarians, only to be ignored.

Along the way, Viganò – a lead whistle-blower behind the 2012 "Vatileaks" fiasco, who's more recently become a public critic of Francis' over the Pope's approach in Amoris Laetitia – produces a laundry list of leading prelates both in the Vatican and the US who he alleges were aware of McCarrick's misconduct, as well as other indications of the disgraced prelate's influence with the current pontiff.

Notably, however, one thing the former Nuncio doesn't mention is his own reported pressure on the auxiliaries of the Twin Cities in early 2015 to quash a diocesan investigation into similar allegations of misconduct and harassment by then-Archbishop John Nienstedt, which played a part in the outspoken conservative's early resignation at 68 that summer as a multi-front scandal enveloped Minnesota's lead fold, dragging most of the state's dioceses into Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to a torrent of abuse suits. (Only this past May, the Twin Cities church settled its own bankruptcy filing with a $210 million settlement for some 450 survivors – the second-largest payout ever made by an American see.)

To be sure, the statement contains a fair share of seeking to settle scores – among other gripes, Viganò (who lamented his transfer to Washington as a "punishment" from the outset) grinds his long-standing ax toward Benedict XVI's "Vice-Pope," the then-Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, alongside lambasting several allies of Francis while defending prelates the Pope reputedly views as "right-wing." That the ex-Nuncio's memo was first reported by LifeSiteNews – a conservative outlet devoted to opposing the Pope at practically every turn – merely underscores the point.

Nonetheless, given the source and the broad indictment laid out, here below is Viganò's fulltext – either scrollable in the window, or expandable by clicking the arrow-in-square icon at top right:



Just when you thought it was "safe," more to come.

SVILUPPO: After some leading Whispers ops expressed caution over taking Viganò's authorship of the document at face value late Saturday – with one skeptic musing that the ex-Nuncio has long been "pissed as hell" at Francis – early Sunday, the archbishop confirmed its authenticity to the Washington Post...
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