DUBLIN/BOSTON (Reuters) – A former top Vatican official accused Pope Francis of having known of allegations of sex abuse by a prominent U.S. cardinal for five years before accepting his resignation last month and he called on the pontiff to resign.
In a detailed 11-page statement given to conservative Roman Catholic media outlets during the Pope’s visit to Ireland, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano also accused a long list of current and past Vatican officials and U.S. Church officials of covering up the McCarrick case.
“Pope Francis has repeatedly asked for total transparency in the Church,” wrote Vigano, who has been critical of the pope before.
“In this 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,” he said.
Vigano said he had told Francis in June 2013, just after he was elected pope by his fellow cardinals, about the accusations against McCarrick.
Vatican officials declined immediate comment on Sunday on the statement, which was published by the National Catholic Register and several other media outlets in the United States and Italy.
Vigano, the papal ambassador in Washington from 2011 to 2016, said he had informed top Vatican officials as early as 2006 that McCarrick was suspected of abusing adult seminarians while he was a bishop in two New Jersey dioceses between 1981 and 2001. He said he never received a response to his 2006 memo.