Vatican whistleblower renews criticisms

The former Vatican ambassador to the United States who accused Pope Francis of ignoring a sexual abuse problem in the U.S. church renewed his protests with another letter Thursday. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò released an 11-page letter last month charging Francis and two popes before him of covering up for ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., who was accused of sexually harassing seminarians. Francis removed McCarrick as a cardinal in July after a U.S. church investigation determined an accusation that McCarrick fondled a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible.

In this week’s missive, Viganò blasted the pope for not responding to the accusations in his first letter. He also said the pope has waged a campaign of “subtle slander” against him by making references in homilies to the silence of Jesus before the “Great Accuser”—seemingly comparing the pope’s own unresponsiveness to that of Christ and Viganò’s accusations to the work of Satan.

“The pope’s unwillingness to respond to my charges and his deafness to the appeals by the faithful for accountability are hardly consistent with his calls for transparency and bridge building,” Viganò wrote. Francis refused to take questions about the Viganò accusations during his in-flight news conference returning from the Baltics on Tuesday.