Marco Tosatti - Vigano vs the Vatican : The Uncensored Testimony of the Italian Journalist who Helped Break the Story

Marco Tosatti

Vigan vs. the Vatican

The Uncensored Testimony
of the Italian Journalist
Who Helped Break the Story

Translated by

Giuseppe Pellegrino

An imprint of Sophia Institute Press
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2019 by Chorabooks

English translation Copyright 2019 by Sophia Institute Press

Vigan vs. the Vatican is a translation of Vigan e il Papa: Un testimone racconta (Hong Kong: Chorabooks, 2019).

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Perceptions Design Studio in collaboration with LUCAS Art and Design.

On the cover: Cardinal Vigan; the Vatican (photo Shutterstock).

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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ePub ISBN 978-1-64413-037-7

Contents

The Origin of the Drama

The story of the Vigan dossier, and of everything that followed, began for me one morning at the end of July 2018. A friend phoned me, asking me if I had read an article about the McCarrick affair on a website that follows the Vatican and has close ties to the Secretariat of State.

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, an American cardinal, had been accused in a civil case of abuse of a minor many years ago and, as a result, had been disciplined by the Vatican, which stripped him of his red hat and ordered him to live a life of seclusion, prayer, and penance all this after many years of traveling the world and acting as an unofficial ambassador of the Holy See.

I had not read the article, so my friend summed it up for me.

Further, he said, Archbishop Vigan would call me. He was angry about the references that were made in the article to the two nuncios to the United States who preceded him, who were both dead and could no longer speak for themselves, as well as references to Pope Benedict XVI, who had punished McCarrick.

I had met Carlo Maria Vigan a few times at social events and made his acquaintance, nothing more. My friend told me that Archbishop Vigan followed my blog Stilum Curiae , and it seemed to him that, because I had the liberty to speak freely about Church matters, I might be the right person to do an interview with him.

I responded, Why not?

So a couple of days later, the archbishop called me. We agreed to meet at my house in Rome. He came one morning, and as I showed him my recorder, I told him that everything was ready for the interview.

No, he replied, not yet. First I want to tell you a story.

We sat down, and he told me everything that you will soon read here in his first testimony. At the end, I asked, So, shall we do the interview?

Still he replied, No. First I need to take care of some personal matters in the next few days.

* * *

We met again a few days later.

A bit more time passed, and then the report of the grand jury of Pennsylvania came out; one of the reigning pontiffs factotums in the United States, and so I took the initiative of calling Monsignor Vigan.

Have you seen that the report of the grand jury came out? I asked. If you still intend to do that interview, perhaps this is the right moment.

He responded: See you next week.

He arrived at my house once again and immediately said, I thought I should write something instead of giving an interview. Would you like to read it? We read the text through together twice, doing essential editing to clarify terms and concepts for nonspecialists and to remove superfluous lines.

We then considered which Italian newspaper should publish it. I thought of in great esteem, and it seemed to me that it would be one of the few newspapers that would not sound the alarm to the Vatican to prevent its being published.

ViganInfovaticana. It would take a few days for the translations, as there were more than ten pages of text.

Monsignor Vigan and I met on August 22 and decided that the testimony should be issued four days later, at 7:00 on Sunday morning.

That afternoon I was not at peace until I sent the text to those who were to receive it. It was a heavy responsibility. The embargo was supposed to last until 7:00 on Sunday morning, but I had not considered something. At midnight on Saturday night, RAI [Radiotelevisione Italiana] put up the front pages of the next mornings newspaper on its website. And naturally La Verit had the entire front page dedicated to the pope and McCarrick. Someone pointed this out to our American colleagues, who then ran their articles, anticipating the embargo by several hours.

Why am I giving you these details?

Because from the very first hours and days after publication of the archbishops testimony, an incredibly vast machine of disinformation and discrediting went to work.

Some concluded that I had written Archbishop Vigans testimony and, indeed, had practically inspired it. They painted me as a conservative journalist, hostile to the pope, who wanted to put himself in the limelight.

I must say that my opinion of my colleagues which, I confess, was not terribly high to begin with tumbled into an immeasurable abyss. Because of ideology, because they were fascinated, because they were paid, because they are in collusion with the institution these colleagues set out to find the tiniest hair in the egg of Vigans declarations.

I cannot forget the doubts that were cast everywhere by the pro-Francis confirmed it in his anti-Vigan tirade (discussed later in these pages). But I am a person capable of rejoicing in every circumstance and able to smile and give thanks.

The focus of Vigans testimony was and still is what I called attention to in my blog Stilum Curiae on August 26, 2018, the Sunday morning when La Verit published the entire document.

To whit, since 2013, immediately after his election, Pope Francis knew about all the misdeeds of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Not only did he choose not to do anything; he even made Cardinal McCarrick his privileged counselor regarding the nomination of bishops and cardinals in the Church in America and for international politics. In effect, the reigning pontiff covered for Cardinal McCarrick for five years, all the while knowing that McCarrick had sexually abused dozens of seminarians and young priests.

This is the explosive claim of Archbishop Vigan. Further, in 2013 and in his official capacity, Vigan personally informed the pontiff of McCarricks misdeeds and did so in response to a request of the pope concerning the situation of this homosexual predator cardinal.

Vigans claim is contained, along with many other details, in the ten-page document that the archbishop shared with me and on which we worked together.

Among other things, Monsignor Vigan reveals in it that Cardinal McCarrick was previously subjected by Benedict XVI to a punishment analogous to the one he has received in recent weeks, a punishment that, however, Cardinal Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, never actually applied and that Pope Francis de facto canceled from the moment of his election.

* * *

Here is what Archbishop Vigan said:

The principal reason I am revealing this information now is because of the tragic situation in the Church, which can be repaired only by the full truth, in the same way in which it has been gravely wounded by abuse and by intrigues. I am doing it to protect the Church: only the truth can set her free.