The Vatican on Friday informed a Donald Trump-supporting archbishop that he is being excommunicated for refusing to recognize Pope Francis' authority after years of outspoken public attacks.
Carlo Maria Vigano, an ultra-conservative who served as the Vatican’s diplomat to Washington, D.C. between 2011 and 2016, was formally accused last month of schism, which is one of the most serious offenses in canon law. Schism is “the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him,” according to the Vatican.
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Vigano thereafter made increasingly baroque attacks on Francis while also drifting into conspiracy theories, backing bogus claims about COVID vaccines and making proclamations about the evils of the “deep state.” This week, he shared an X post from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in which the MAGA congresswoman asserted: “The Covid vaccines are killing people.”
He’s also won the praise of Donald Trump. In 2020, Vigano wrote a letter to the then-president in which he linked COVID restrictions and Black Lives Matter protests as the work of “the children of darkness.” “It is quite clear that the use of street protests is instrumental to the purposes of those who would like to see someone elected in the upcoming presidential elections who embodies the goals of the deep state,” Vigano wrote.
“So honored by Archbishop Vigano’s incredible letter to me,” Trump wrote in a tweet sharing a link to the crazed prose. “I hope everyone, religious or not, reads it!”
In 1962, New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Rummel excommunicated three Louisiana Catholics who opposed his efforts to desegregate Catholic schools.
