The Vatican’s disciplinary body, the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a formal decree, made public by Viganò on Thursday, assigning the senior cleric to a penal canon trial. The charges: the “crime of schism” and “denial of the legitimacy of Pope Francis.”
Such trials are exceedingly rare, and the move underscores a recent effort by the Vatican to take more formal action against a gaggle of archconservatives who have sought to undermine Francis’s papacy from the inside. Conviction could lead to Viganò’s defrocking and excommunication, ending the career of the 83-year-old Italian who has emerged as the leading symbol of traditionalist resistance to a pope he views as wildly liberal.
On Thursday, Viganò said in a statement that he saw the “accusations against me as an honor.” He referred to Francis as he always does, eschewing his official title and using his name before he was pope: Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
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“It is no coincidence that the accusation against me concerns the questioning of the legitimacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and … the ideological, theological, moral, and liturgical cancer of which the Bergoglian ‘synodal church’ is the necessary metastasis,” Viganò wrote.
Viganò hasn’t made many public appearances since calling for Francis’s resignation in 2018. But he has continued to deliver stinging missives on X and the conservative U.S. outlet LifeSiteNews. He has also talked about creating a seminary free of Vatican interference.
The charge of schism is defined as a rupture with the church’s “unity” under the pope. In this case, the Vatican cited Vigano’s public statements that have “resulted in a denial of the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church,” as well as his rejection of Francis’s “legitimacy” and the reforms laid out by the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.
The trial amounts to an answer of just how far the Holy See, where the pope rules as the supreme power, is willing to go in allowing dissent. Though criticism of a sitting pontiff is allowed, church codes require clerical fealty, and observers say that Viganò crossed a line by outright challenging the authority and legitimacy of the pope.
Francis has weathered conservative criticism for years, including vitriolic attacks from within clerical ranks. But as criticism has grown louder in recent months, the Vatican has taken more decisive action. Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Tex., was stripped of his diocese, while American Cardinal Raymond Burke, who frequently spoke at conservative conferences that excoriated Francis, lost his pension and Rome apartment.
“Now they’re hitting at the most visible character, who recently said this pope is an usurper of the throne of St. Peter, and that can’t be accepted,” said Marco Politi, a Rome-based author of several books on Francis. He added that Francis “no longer wants within the church organized groups that are frontal enemies of the pope.”
Viganò was ordered to appear at the Vatican’s disciplinary office on Thursday and told that he would be tried in absentia if he didn’t, according to document advising him of the charges. It was not clear if he had presented himself after publicly signaling his defiance.
The conservative Italian prelate made headlines in 2018 when an 11-page letter he wrote went public, and in which he claimed Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI had been aware of sexual misconduct allegations against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former Washington, D.C., archbishop. He offered no proof to back up his claims.
McCarrick, 93, resigned in 2018, and was defrocked — or stripped of his clerical rights — in 2019, after a Vatican investigation found him guilty of soliciting sex during confession and committing “sins” with minors and adults “with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.” He also faced a flurry of civil suits in the United States from men who have accused him of abuse, though he has claimed to have dementia and a court-appointed expert has confirmed his memory loss, sparring him from criminal trials.
The Vatican trial of Viganò comes three weeks after the prelate published fresh allegations on X, claiming Francis had committed the “same abuses” as McCarrick when he was serving in a senior church position in his native Argentina. He offered no evidence.
Viganò appeared to escalate his missives against Francis following a December ruling, authorized by Francis, allowing Catholic priests to conduct short blessings of people in same-sex unions. In his lengthy written response to the trial, he again took aim at that ruling: “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.”
On Thursday, that Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin told journalists in Rome that “Archbishop Viganò has taken some attitudes and some actions for which he must answer.”
“I am very sorry because I always appreciated him as a great worker, very faithful to the Holy See, someone who was, in a certain sense, also an example. When he was apostolic nuncio he did good work.
“I don’t know what happened,” Parolin said.
