Vatican excommunicates anti-LGBTQ+ Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

The Vatican has excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who is known for anti-LGBTQ+ and other ultraconservative stances and has called Pope Francis “a servant of Satan.”

The Vatican’s disciplinary body, the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, put Viganò on trial last month for denying the pope’s authority and for the “crime of schism,” The Washington Post reports. The dicastery announced Friday that he was excommunicated.

“His public statements manifesting his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with the members of the Church subject to him, and of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council are well known,” said a statement from the dicastery. “At the conclusion of the penal process, the Most Reverend Carlo Maria Viganò was found guilty of the reserved delict of schism.” The Second Vatican Council, convened in the 1960s, led to the use of local languages instead of Latin in the Roman Catholic Mass, an increased role for laypeople, and promotion of better relations between Catholicism and other religions.

“The excommunication means that Viganò cannot officially accept Catholic sacraments including Communion, ordain priests or officiate Mass,” the Post reports.

Viganò was the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2011 to 2016. In that capacity in 2015, he invited Kim Davis to an audience with the pope. As clerk of Rowan County, Ky., Davis had shut down all marriage license operations to avoid issuing licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision for nationwide marriage equality. Davis and her supporters characterized the meeting as a private audience, something the Vatican denied.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean survivor of sexual abuse who met with Pope Francis later, said the pope told him Viganò sneaked Davis into the audience, leading to Viganò’s firing from the ambassadorial position in 2016. Viganò claimed the pope was lying.

More recently, Viganò criticized Francis’s decision to let same-sex couples be blessed in church, as long as the ceremonies do not resemble weddings and are not part of regular services. “Bergoglio authorizes the blessing of same-sex couples and imposes on the faithful the acceptance of homosexualism, while covering up the scandals of his protégés and promoting them to the highest positions of responsibility,” Viganò wrote in a document submitted to the dicastery trial, according to the Post. Viganò did not attend the trial in person. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is Pope Francis’s original name.

The church’s handling of sexual abuse cases has drawn criticism from both liberals and conservatives. But it must be pointed out that pedophilia and homosexuality are not related and that many gay youth have been victims of abuse. Viganò has also accused Francis of being an abuser, without offering evidence, the Post notes.

Viganò wrote an admiring letter to Donald Trump in 2020, saying, “For the first time, the United States has in you a President who courageously defends the right to life, who is not ashamed to denounce the persecution of Christians throughout the world, who speaks of Jesus Christ and the right of citizens to freedom of worship.”

In the letter, he condemned the protests over George Floyd’s murder by police and the closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Viganò went on to claim that in addition to the “deep state” Trump has often referred to in describing government agencies the former president contended were conspiring against him, there is “a deep church that betrays its duties and forswears its proper commitments before God.”

Viganò also recently retweeted a message from U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican and Trump ally, asserting that the COVID-19 vaccines “are killing people” — for which there is no evidence.

Pope Francis has usually tolerated dissent within the church, but he has taken action against a few critics. In November, he removed Bishop Joseph Strickland as head of the diocese of Tyler, Texas. Strickland had accused Francis of undermining the faith through his tentatively liberal moves, including his welcoming attitude toward LGBTQ+ people.

The same month, the pope revoked retired Cardinal Raymond Burke’s salary and his right to a subsidized apartment in the Vatican. The staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ Burke had been one of the most vocal critics of the pope’s outreach to the queer community and other liberal actions.

"Among the pope’s critics, though, Viganò was in a league of his own," the Post reports.