Cardinals attend the religious mass 'Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice' at Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, Vatican City, 12 March 2013. The Catholic Church's 115 cardinal electors are taking part in a mass in St. Peter's Basilica on 12 March ahead of entering the conclave for a papal election that observers say has no clear favourite. The Pro Eligendo Romano Pontefice ('For the Election of the Roman Pontiff') mass is presided by Angelo Sodano, the elderly dean of the College of Cardinals, and is also open to non-voting cardinals - those aged more than 80. The next pope will take over a Church beset by infighting, scandal and dwindling support, particularly in the West. VanSickle: I pray for the soul of my abuser While you're in Rome, take in the night view at St. Peter's Basilica of St. Peter. It's in Vatican City, which is technically a tiny, separate country that's completely surrounded by the much larger city of Rome. VATICAN CITY, VATICAN - MARCH 13: A woman holds rosary beads while she prays and waits for smoke to emanate from the chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel which will indicate whether or not the College of Cardinals have elected a new Pope on March 13, 2013 in Vatican City, Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI's successor is being chosen by the College of Cardinals in Conclave in the Sistine Chapel. The 115 cardinal-electors, meeting in strict secrecy, will need to reach a two-thirds-plus-one vote majority to elect the 266th Pontiff. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) Cardinal Dolan: Sex abuse stories not new to me German Bishops take part in the opening mass at the German Bishops' Conference on September 25, 2018 in the cathedral in Fulda, western Germany. - Germany's Catholic Church is due on September 25, 2018 to confess and apologise for thousands of cases of sexual abuse against children, part of a global scandal heaping pressure on the Vatican. It will release the latest in a series of reports on sexual crimes and cover-ups spanning decades that has shaken the largest Christian Church, from Europe to the United States, South America and Australia. (Photo by Arne Dedert / dpa / AFP) / Germany OUT (Photo credit should read ARNE DEDERT/AFP/Getty Images) Pope Francis (L) speaks speaks with the Archbishop of Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl at the end of a midday prayer with US bishops at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, DC, on September 23, 2015 on the second day of his visit to the US. AFP PHOTO/NICHOLAS KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images) Pope Francis celebrates mass on Christmas eve marking the birth of Jesus Christ on December 24, 2017 at St Peter's basilica in Vatican. / AFP PHOTO / Andreas SOLARO (Photo credit should read ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images) (CNN) — Even before Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano called for Pope Francis to resign on Sunday, the two men had a history, and it wasn’t good. Vigano, the former Vatican ambassador to the United States, angered some church officials in 2015 by arranging a meeting at the Vatican’s embassy in Washington between the Pope and Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to sign same-sex marriage certificates. During his trip to the United States, the Pope had tried to stay above the country’s culture wars. Vigano foisted Francis right into the fray. The Vatican, which tried to distance the Pope from Davis, was displeased. Two years later, Francis quietly accepted Vigano’s resignation. On Sunday, Vigano struck back. In an 11-page “testimony” released to conservative Catholic media, Vigano accused Francis of ignoring his warnings about Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, who led the Archdiocese of Washington from 2000-2006. Under Francis’ orders, McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals last month after accusations that he molested an altar boy and seminarians. But Vigano said the Pope earlier had lifted restrictions on McCarrick put in place by Pope Benedict XVI, who resigned in 2015. “In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church,” Vigano wrote, “he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them.” Vigano’s accusations come as Francis and his church are trying to contain a quickly escalating sexual abuse crisis that has spread from Australia to Pennsylvania. In Ireland, a country devastated by its own clergy abuse scandals, the Pope repeatedly apologized last weekend for the sins and crimes of church leaders, lamenting that “some members of the hierarchy didn’t own up to these painful situations and kept silent.” On the plane ride home, the Pope himself kept silent about Vigano’s accusations. “I will not say a single word about this,” he said. “I believe the statement speaks for itself. And you have the sufficient journalistic ability to make your conclusions. It’s an act of trust.” While journalists dig for the truth, and the Pope keeps silent, Vigano’s letter has emerged as a sort of Rorschach test for Catholics: Many conservative Catholics say the Pope must go. Liberal Catholics accuse the archbishop of launching a coup d’etat against his boss. “This is a coup operation against Pope Francis,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of Catholic history and theology at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. “It is a stunning convergence between the personal agenda of Vigano and the theological agenda of those who do not like Pope Francis.” Turning the tables on Vigano, the Archdiocese of Washington suggested his tenure in the United States should itself be investigated. A 2014 memo shows that Vigano himself demanded that evidence be destroyed in an attempt to end an investigation against a former archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, according to CNN Vatican analyst John Allen. But the Bishop of Phoenix, the Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted, issued a statement defending Vigano, whom he said he has known since 1979. “Although I have no knowledge of the information that he reveals in his written testimony of August 22, 2018, so I cannot personally verify its truthfulness, I have always known and respected him as a man of truthfulness, faith and integrity,” Olmsted wrote. A ‘hit list’ Even before he tussled with Francis, Vigano was adept at courting controversy. In 2011, when he ran the Vatican City State, the Italian churchman clashed with his superiors, accusing Vatican officials of corruption. The charges became enmeshed in the Vatileaks scandal, when former Pope Benedict’s butler leaked documents detailing the infighting. “Vigano presented himself as a whistle blower,” said John Thavis, who was the Rome bureau chief for Catholic News Service at the time. “But he also had a persecution complex. He saw conspiracy theories all around him.” Thavis said Benedict didn’t seem impressed by Vigano’s views. “He sent him 4,000 miles away, to the United States.” Vigano was appointed the Vatican’s US ambassador in October 2011. For the most part, he kept a low profile, though some accused the archbishop of breaking with church protocol by appearing at an anti-gay marriage rally at the Supreme Court. (Typically, Vatican ambassadors – known as nuncios – do not publicly involve themselves in another country’s internal political debates.) Besides representing the Pope, nuncios typically advise popes on whom to appoint as bishops. In his letter Sunday, Vigano seemed bitter that Francis had relied on other Vatican officials for recommendations, saying that “the nunciature in Washington was now out of the picture in the appointment of bishops.” Instead, Vigano said, the appointment of several bishops to top posts in Chicago and New Jersey were “orchestrated” by McCarrick and his successor in Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, as well as Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, a Honduran who is one of the Pope’s closest advisers. More salaciously, Vigano said the Catholic Church is plagued by “homosexual networks” that “act under the concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus tentacles, and strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations, and are strangling the entire Church.” Those “networks,” Vigano said, were complicit in a “conspiracy of silence” that allowed McCarrick’s and others’ alleged abuses to continue.<doc-sep>He said that neither Cardinal Parolin nor a host of other Vatican officials had replied, but that when he had brought up the subject with Cardinal McCarrick’s replacement in Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, “it was immediately clear to me that he was fully aware of it.” Ed McFadden, a spokesman for Cardinal Wuerl, disputed that account on Sunday. “In spite of what Archbishop Viganò’s memo indicates, Cardinal Wuerl did not receive any documentation or information during his time in Washington regarding any actions taken against Archbishop McCarrick,” Mr. McFadden said. Some survivors of clerical abuse called the allegations a distraction. “This is infighting between curia factions that are exploiting the abuse crisis and victims of clergy sexual abuse as leverage in the struggle for church power,” said Peter Isely, a survivor. “The sexual abuse crisis is not about whether a bishop is a liberal or a conservative. It is about protecting children.” The controversy over the allegations is expected to grow in coming days, especially as Francis has declined to deny it. Instead on Sunday’s flight, he blamed the media for promoting an “atmosphere of guilt” around suspected clerics and shared that until his visit he “had never heard” about Ireland’s notorious mother and baby homes, where children were ripped away from unwed mothers. He also sought to strike the same conciliatory tone that hundreds of thousands of faithful heard earlier in the day as he began a Mass at Phoenix Park in Dublin by explicitly asking forgiveness for the church’s sins and abuse. “Some members of the hierarchy didn’t own up to these painful situations,” he said at the Mass. “And kept silent.”<doc-sep>Even if critics are correct that this letter was colored by vicious hierarchy infighting, it has exposed the extent of the vitriol surrounding the pope’s handling of sexual abuse. It’s not just the pope’s political enemies who have questioned his credibility. Francis is also facing a lack of trust among the faithful in the Church. [Catholics are desperate for tangible reforms on clergy sex Abuse] In recent years, few countries have been hit harder by scandals in the Catholic Church than Ireland. Clergy failed to report allegations of child sexual abuse against dozens of priests over decades, according to an independent audit. Historians and investigators have slowly uncovered years of abuses at so-called mother and baby homes, where unwed pregnant women were often sent against their will. The facts were particularly gruesome in the town of Tuam, where the remains of dead infants and fetuses were found in the sewer system next to a home run by nuns. So perhaps it was inevitable that Francis’s trip to Ireland, which marked a triennial global gathering of families in Dublin, was filled with grave reminders of Ireland’s troubled past. Protesters held vigils throughout the country for victims of clergy sex abuse. The pope met with a number of victims. And in his closing remarks, Francis apologized for “abuses of power, conscience, and sexual abuse,” and begged forgiveness for leaders in the Church who failed to report abuse or show compassion to victims. Significantly, he asked forgiveness from the single mothers who had been sent away to homes, and who were later condemned for wanting to be with their children. But the pope’s conciliatory tone was also mixed with defensiveness, and moments of what might be described as naiveté. According to The New York Times, he told reporters that he had never heard of Ireland’s mother and baby homes before this visit. He also rejected the notion that the Church needs a standing court to handle allegations against priests, and he blamed journalists for promoting an “atmosphere of guilt” towards clergy accused of abuse. He was most defensive about Viganò’s letter, telling reporters to “make your own judgment. … I believe the document speaks for itself.” The 11-page letter, which was published by the conservative outlet National Catholic Register, contains a number shocking allegations. * Viganò claims that a series of Vatican representatives in the U.S. knew about the allegations against McCarrick as early as two decades ago and reported them to the Holy See. He alleges that Pope Benedict XVI sanctioned McCarrick—although no sanctions were ever made public—and that Francis then disregarded those sanctions by making McCarrick his “trusted counselor.” After a series of unsubstantiated allegations against a number of prominent American clerics—some of which are openly speculative and contain conspiratorial language about bishops “[promoting] the LGBT agenda” and supporting pro-abortion politicians—Viganò calls on Francis to resign.<doc-sep>
Pope Francis said Sunday that he had read the letter from a former Vatican official that calls for the Roman Catholic Church leader’s resignation. However, the Pope told reporters he would not say a single word about the letter’s contents. He said the letter “speaks for itself.” Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote the 11-page document and had released it to Catholic media groups earlier in the day Sunday. In the letter, Vigano accuses Pope Francis of having known for years about sex abuse reports involving former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of the United States. Last month, the Pope accepted McCarrick’s resignation following the release of evidence that he had abused a child. It was the first resignation of a Cardinal in connection with sex abuse claims. Vigano wrote that the Pope “must acknowledge his mistakes.” He also said Francis should resign to honor the Church’s policy of rejecting abuse or hiding of abuse. Vigano served as the Vatican Ambassador to the United States from 2006 to 2011. He said he told Francis about the accusations against McCarrick in June 2013. Vigano wrote that the current Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, also received information from the Vatican about McCarrick. Wuerl’s spokesman denied the accusation. The letter was released during the Pope’s two-day trip to Ireland. Pope Francis opened a service Sunday in Dublin by asking for forgiveness for the “scandal and betrayal” felt by victims of sex abuse by Catholic clergy. Organizers had been expecting a crowd of 500,000 people, but only about 200,000 gathered. Among them were protesters of the Catholic Church. Demonstrator Maggie Lawler expressed dissatisfaction with the Pope’s message. “Apologies don't really go far enough. There needs to be accountability. People need to answer questions, they need to stand up, be responsible for their actions.” Protester Elaine Murphy agreed with Lawler. She described Francis’ apology Sunday as “empty.” The Pope also met privately in Ireland with a group of abuse victims. I’m Caty Weaver. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story acknowledge - v. to say that you accept or do not deny the truth or existence of (something) scandal - n. an occurrence in which people are shocked and upset because of behavior that is morally or legally wrong