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VATICAN CITY \u2014 A top Vatican cardinal issued a scathing rebuke Sunday of the ambassador who accused Pope Francis of covering up the sexual misconduct of a prominent American cardinal, saying his claims were false, \u201cblasphemous\u201d and demanding that he repent.<\/p>\n
Six weeks after Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano threw the papacy into turmoil over his claims about ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the head of the Vatican\u2019s bishops office said there was no evidence in his files backing Vigano\u2019s claims that Francis annulled any sanctions against McCarrick.<\/p>\n
Cardinal Marc Ouellet\u2019s letter was issued Sunday, a day after Francis authorized a \u201cthorough study\u201d of all Vatican archives into how McCarrick rose through the ranks of the Catholic Church despite allegations he sexually preyed on seminarians and young priests.<\/p>\n
The letter, addressed to Vigano but identified as an open letter to the faithful, marked an extraordinary and decisive end to the official Vatican silence about Vigano\u2019s claims. In it, Ouellet both defended the pope and criticized Vigano, asserting that the conservative cleric had used the scandal over sexual abuse in the U.S. to score ideological points with Francis\u2019 critics on the Catholic right.<\/p>\n
Ouellet said a review of his files showed there were no documents about any sanctions imposed on McCarrick and that it was \u201cfalse\u201d to suggest Francis had annulled any such measures.<\/p>\n
Ouellet did acknowledge that McCarrick had been \u201cstrongly exhorted\u201d not to travel or appear in public, and to live a discreet life of prayer given rumors against him about his past behavior with young adult men.<\/p>\n
The McCarrick scandal has thrown the U.S. and Vatican hierarchy into turmoil, given it was apparently an open secret in some U.S. church circles that he would invite seminarians to his New Jersey beach house and into his bed. Two men received settlements starting in 2005 from two New Jersey dioceses after they alleged McCarrick sexually molested or harassed them.<\/p>\n
The Vatican was informed starting in at least 2000 about the seminarian complaints.<\/p>\n
Francis accepted McCarrick\u2019s resignation as a cardinal in July after a U.S. church investigation determined that an allegation that he groped a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible. Since then, another man has come forward saying McCarrick molested him when he was a young teen and other men have said they were harassed by McCarrick as adult seminarians and young priests.<\/p>\n
Ouellet\u2019s letter marked the Vatican\u2019s first direct response to Vigano\u2019s 11-page denunciation Aug. 26 in which he accused two dozen Vatican and U.S. church officials of covering up for McCarrick, and demanded Francis resign for his role in the scandal.<\/p>\n
In the document, Vigano claimed he told Francis during a June 23, 2013 meeting that Pope Benedict XVI had sanctioned McCarrick to a lifetime of penance and prayer for having \u201ccorrupted a generation of seminarians and priests.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vigano implied that Francis still rehabilitated McCarrick from the \u201ccanonical sanctions\u201d and made him a trusted counselor.<\/p>\n
Ouellet noted that the June 23 meeting occurred as Francis was meeting with all his ambassadors for the first time, and was gathering an \u201cenormous quantity of verbal and written information\u201d about the church around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI strongly doubt that McCarrick concerned him to the degree you\u2019d like to think, given he was an 82-year-old emeritus archbishop who had been out of a job for seven years,\u201d Ouellet wrote.<\/p>\n
Ouellet said in all his meetings with Francis about bishop nominations, he never heard him refer once to McCarrick as a trusted counselor. He said he couldn\u2019t believe Vigano had arrived at such a \u201cmonstrous\u201d and \u201cblasphemous\u201d conclusion given that Francis had nothing to do with McCarrick\u2019s career rise in the previous decades.<\/p>\n
He said he understood that Vigano might be bitter at the way his own career ended and his disagreement with Francis\u2019 policies. But he wrote:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot end your priestly life in an open and scandalous rebellion that inflicts a painful wound\u201d on the church and divides its people. He urged Vigano: \u201cCome out of your hiding place, repent for your revolt and return to better sentiments toward the Holy Father.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A top Vatican cardinal issued a scathing rebuke Sunday of the ambassador who accused Pope Francis of covering up the sexual misconduct of a prominent American cardinal, saying his claims were false, “ VATICAN CITY \u2014 A top Vatican cardinal issued a scathing rebuke Sunday of the ambassador who accused Pope Francis of covering up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8180,8181,424,1178,3335],"class_list":["post-17855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-worlds","tag-carlo-maria-vigano","tag-marc-ouellet","tag-religion-belief","tag-roman-catholic-church","tag-theodore-mccarrick"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}