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ABUSE CRISIS: Former top Vatican official calls for Pope’s resignation
A former top Vatican official Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has called for the resignation of Pope Francis over the sex abuse and corruption crises rocking the Catholic Church.
In a detailed 11-page bombshell statement given to conservative Roman Catholic media outlets, Archbishop Vigano accused a long list of current and past Vatican and U.S. Church officials of covering up the case of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who resigned last month in disgrace.
In remarkably blunt language, Vigano said alleged cover-ups in the Church were making it look like “a conspiracy of silence not so dissimilar from the one that prevails in the mafia”.
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“Pope Francis has repeatedly asked for total transparency in the Church,” wrote Vigano, who has criticised the pope before.
“In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, his extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, 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 said.
Reacting to Vigano’s statement, Francis, speaking to reporters on the plane returning from a trip to Dublin, said dismissively that a statement containing the accusations “speaks for itself”.
Pope Francis had earlier likened the sex scandal and corruption rocking the church to excrement in a toilet.
Speaking on the first papal visit to once deeply Catholic Ireland in almost four decades, Pope Francis vowed to end the sexual exploitation of children by clergy.
At an event which had sex abuse survivors in attendance, Pope Francis acknowledge that it was to the Church’s shame it had not addressed these “repugnant crimes” and said he sought a greater commitment to eliminating this “scourge”.
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