The Pope on Saturday said he shared in the “pain and shame” of the church’s failure to deal with historic allegations of clerical abuse, and the latest claims are likely to intensify calls for action.
Vigano’s 11-page letter was published simultaneously on Saturday in several conservative Catholic publications in the US.
The Vatican said it had no comment to make on the allegations.
Vigano, 77, who was a papal nuncio in Washington between 2011 and 2016, said that Benedict XVI imposed canonical sanctions against Cardinal McCarrick in the late 2000s.
McCarrick who was forced to leave the seminary where he lived, avoid all public contact and live a life of penance after former Vatican ambassadors in Washington, (now dead), reported him for gravely immoral behaviour with seminarians and priests.
Vigano claims Pope Francis asked him about McCarrick when he took office in June 2013, but that Francis ignored his warnings, and instead made him a trusted counselor.
“He (Pope Francis) knew from at least June 23, 2013 that McCarrick was a serial predator,” wrote Vigano,”
“he knew that he was a corrupt man, he covered for him to the bitter end.”
The former nuncio wrote that Francis was “abdicating the mandate which Christ gave to Peter to confirm the brethren,” and urged him to “acknowledge his mistakes”.
The pope was on Sunday due to preach in front of around 500,000 people in Dublin at the end of a two-day visit to Ireland.(NAN)
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