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Thursday, June 20, 2024: Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano releases a statement to the public.
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has informed me, with a simple email, of the initiation of an extrajudicial penal trial against me, with the accusation of having committed the crime of schism and charging me of having denied the legitimacy of “Pope Francis” of having broken communion “with Him” and of having rejected the Second Vatican Council. I have been summoned to the Palace of the Holy Office on June 20, in person or represented by a canon lawyer. I assume that the sentence has already been prepared, given that it is an extrajudicial process.
I regard the accusations against me as an honor. I believe that the very wording of the charges confirms the theses that I have repeatedly defended in my various addresses. It is no coincidence that the accusation against me concerns the questioning of the legitimacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the rejection of Vatican II: the Council represents the ideological, theological, moral, and liturgical cancer of which the Bergoglian “synodal church” is the necessary metastasis.
E così avvenne.
After years of controversies and pyrotechnics from this firebrand bishop, Rome had finally said “basta.”
Immediately after the announcement, the Trads took to their keyboards and roared over “the injustice.” Jim Caviezel— the man millions see when they close their eyes and think of Christ— took to twitter to ask his followers to pray for the cleric, exalting Vigano as a “crusader for the truth.” The sedevacantists joined the choir to decry Rome’s “insanity” over pursuing Vigano and turning a blind eye to the more blatant heretics. And yet, there were more unexpected reactions to the news, and I believe these reactions are revealing, a glimpse into the zeitgeist.
The large QAnon adjacent accounts immediately came out of the woodwork to defend his honor. Anyone who has not been paying close attention to Viganos escapades over the last couple of years may find this fact odd. Why would the Q Boomers care about a former Nuncio?
But there was another category of reaction that is of interest, for it reveals a profound “schism” in the once monolithic genus of “Trad Caths.” The Trad subculture of the last decade has voiced near-unanimous opposition to the first Jesuit Pope. This is no longer the case. A burgeoning population of younger Catholics, the internet Zoomers who dawn laser-eyed profile pictures of Popes and saints, have flipped this papal skepticism on its head. They claim to be resolutely anti-modernist and yet signal their commitment to Catholicity in a zealous defense of Pope Francis. It is not my intention to dissect the root causes of this peculiar phenomenon today, but I will note that this subculture manifests several humorous contradictions. For example, this new generation tends to be vociferous anti-semites, while somehow ignoring the philosemitic remarks of the post-Vatican II Pontiffs. And to reconcile these contradictions, they transform Bergoglio into a figure far removed from his public statements. A genius arch-conservative political operator, who is merely feigning liberal positions. A conspiracy theory so audacious that it rivals many of Vigano’s own.
But our focus today is not on the masses. It is to make sense of a man whose actions have at times seemed senseless. A man I once considered a hero.
But there are no heroes in Rome.
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“Corruption” can be a misleading word. The noun encompasses a wide scale. There are degrees of corruption. Bribing a police officer in Tijuana to get out of a speeding ticket is corruption. Rigging a national election is corruption.
The Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), also known as the Vatican Bank, is corrupt. An appropriate adjective to describe the level of corruption would not be “petty,” or “moderate,” but perhaps “biblical.”
Those who combat corruption tend to be recognized as good men. Men who successfully combat “Biblical Corruption” are recognized as Heroes.
And so began the tale of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.
In July 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Vigano as Secretary General of the Vatican City Governorate. Vigano was intended to be a reformer. Reformers do not usually last long. When Vigano took his position, Vatican City was running on a 10.5 million dollar deficit. Vigano immediately insisted on centralized accounting procedures and true accountability for city expenses. In the span of a year, he turned Vatican City’s 10 million dollar deficit into a 44 million dollar surplus. This ruffling of coffers also rustled some feathers. Viganò’s new controls produced a lot of resentment among administrators of individual departments, such as the Vatican museums and Vatican gardens, long accustomed to operating in semi-autonomous fashion. This earned Vigano a Roman promotion (demotion through promotion). He was sent away (against his wishes) in October 2011, with his promotion to the position of Apostolic Nuncio to Washington DC.
In 2012, several documents would be leaked, the so-called Vatileaks scandal. Two of those documents were letters written by Vigano to Ratzinger. One line in the letters said, “My transfer would provoke confusion among all those who’ve believed that it’s possible to clean up so many situations of corruption and dishonesty.”
In response to Vigano’s leaked letters, the Vatican Governorate released the following message:
“The unauthorized publication of two letters of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the first addressed to the Holy Father on March 27, 2011, the second to the Cardinal Secretary of State on May 8, for the Governorate of Vatican City is a source of great bitterness… The allegations contained in them cannot but lead to the impression that the Governorate of Vatican City, instead of being the instrument of responsible government, is an unreliable entity, at the mercy of dark forces. After careful examination of the contents of the two letters, the President of the Governorate sees it as his duty to publicly declare that those assertions are the result of erroneous assessments, or fears based on unsubstantiated evidence, even openly contradicted by the main characters invoked as witnesses.”
The Vatileaks scandal was apocalyptic, in the original sense of the word. And once again, as has happened so many times in Romes's history, everything changed.
In the United States, Vigano in his position as Apostolic Nuncio would take over investigations into clerical abuse. It is said he acted faithfully and valiantly, and I have no reason to doubt it. In January 2016, Vigano had reached the appointed age of 75, and retired from his position.
Up to this point, Vigano had faithfully served his mission to the Church, and did so in a wounded age, while embodying two noble aspects of Christ: the chasing of the money changers from the temple, and the protection of the little ones.
But it was in 2018 that a new archetype emerged, that of the whistleblower. On August 25, 2018, Vigano released an open letter on the topic of Cardinal McCarrick. In it, he claimed that Pope Francis "knew from at least June 23, 2013, that McCarrick was a serial predator. He knew that he was a corrupt man, he covered for him to the bitter end." He also stated: "In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal church, he [Pope Francis] 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 to cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick's abuses and resign along with all of them... We must tear down the conspiracy of silence with which bishops and priests have protected themselves at the expense of their faithful, a conspiracy of silence that in the eyes of the world risks making the church look like a sect, a conspiracy of silence not so dissimilar from the one that prevails in the mafia."
Here was a cleric who faithfully fulfilled his obligation to the Church with distinction, and after an illustrious career had decided to speak out, to condemn the corruption, to spit zealous fire upon the agents of darkness— a voice crying out from the wilderness— with all the righteous inertia of a biblical prophet. There was a distinctly biblical authority he was encompassing here, an archetypal wrath, an ancient zeal. But it was during COVID that he truly took up the prophet’s mantle. With all the eschatological glitter such a position entails.
The language he used changed. He began to speak like a prophet. It was as if in this period, he began to truly believe that he was one.
But as anyone who has flipped through a bible can tell you, the position of Prophet is a precarious one.
On June 7, 2020, Archbishop Vigano released an open letter to then-President Donald J Trump. I will post the letter in full.
After rereading these words I cannot help but think how remarkably stale they feel four years later. Talk of the “New World Order” and George Soros feels aged now, but in 2020, during the height of the COVID pandemic, this letter still contained a sense of velocity. To hear a distinguished member of the Church hierarchy speak with such force, such immediacy, and such zeal, resonated with me and countless others. But in hindsight, I can now see the cracks.
Vigano began to speak as if he was a prophet. In the second letter to President Trump, he wholly equates himself with John the Baptist.
Allow me to address you at this hour in which the fate of the whole world is being threatened by a global conspiracy against God and humanity.
I write to you as an Archbishop, as a Successor of the Apostles, as the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America.
I am writing to you in the midst of the silence of both civil and religious authorities.
May you accept these words of mine as the “voice of one crying out in the desert” (Jn 1:23).
Around a year later he published a book that repeated this prophetic allusion in the title.
The book was a collection of his writings, but the introduction and commentary were borderline hagiographical.
His public statements and rhetoric became more and more aligned with the Q phenomenon, and the Q boomers embraced him with open arms.
Now, I think a quick clarification is in order before continuing.
I am not denigrating Vigano here for advancing “wild conspiracies.” The Deep Church exists. The Deep State exists. There are Masonic plots. COVID was… well… COVID, and even today the mainstream media outlets are admitting what we knew 4 years ago. Conspiracy theorists are vindicated once more. I am not attacking Vigano for being a “demagogue,” in fact, I am quite a fan of demagogues! I am not denigrating him as a “conspiracy theorist,” as I am a jolly propagator of such conspiracies. And I am certainly not joining in the accusative jeers of mainstream media outlets that he is some kind of “fascist,” as I am perfectly happy identifying with that label myself.
My issue with him is an old one. If you are going to claim to be a prophet, you better fucking deliver.
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On March 6, 2022, Vigano released a letter supporting Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In it, he referred to Moscow as the “Third Rome,” and noted “the common religious and cultural heritage of having once been part of Great Russia” before declaring that a unified Russia and Ukraine would play “an epochal role in the restoration of Christian Civilization, contributing to bringing the world a period of peace from which the Church too will rise again purified and renewed in her Ministers.”
And so began a new stage in Vigano’s prophetic game, and with it, Vigano’s support of a peculiar belief held by many so-called traditional Catholics. That Russia will act as a purifying force to save the “degenerate” West through military intervention. On the surface this sounds absurd, how can a Catholic endorse such a position and remain a Roman Catholic? It is a plain acceptance of Eastern Dogma. And yet it is now a common one. Marian prophecies and saintly visions are warped to confirm this geopolitical aim, of Russia as Christendom’s savior. The phrase “The Satanic West” gets a lot of playtime from this crowd
Let me be frank. I have a very measured perspective on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I do not think Putin is some rabid maniac intent on restoring the USSR. Putin is a rational political actor. But his interests do not coincide with mine. And he sure as shit funds a lot of communist movements in the West. Likewise, I do not swallow the Moscow propaganda line of all Ukrainians being “Nazis” or homosexual CIA golem. Many Ukrainians simply desire national agency and self-determination. Their war with Russia is not simply an artificial construction of American intelligence agencies forcing them to march on into flames. For a level take on the conflict and EUROMaidan, I recommend this article by Counter Currents.
In all fairness, the trope of the Biblical Prophet announcing a degenerate people’s imminent invasion by a foreign power as chastisement, is as old as the Hebrew’s themselves. But the Prophet Jeremiah never appeared on Babylonian State television, nor attended the ‘Congress of the International Movement of Babylophiles.’ He never sympathized with the invaders. And he sure as hell never called Babylon the “New Jerusalem.”
For the sake of full transparency, I will admit that when the war first broke out I was far more pro-Putin than I am today. I even gave some credence to Vigano’s eschatological narrative. His words possessed a certain velocity. A rhythm. The progressive percussion of a rising action. When he spoke, I felt the irresistible pull of finality. “Could this be it? Could this be the beginning of the end?”
Why do we salivate at such an idea? Two thousand years of anticipation have produced plenty of spit.
But this is of course the danger of mingling eschatology with geopolitics. And it is not a new phenomenon. And when visions of the end collapse into state decision-making, it allows external agents to take advantage. Go down to your cellar, rummage up a ouija board, and ask Oliver Cromwell why they let the Jews back into England.
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Vigano either truly believes that Russia has a special geo-theological role in world history— or he doesn't. It is either a case of prophetic certainty or something far more cynical and treacherous. Vigano has strange bedfellows. He has wholly embraced the Q Anon crowd, a community formed around one of the most blatant intelligence ops of the last decade. A prime example of this is his relationship with Michael Flynn. Their relationship is so close that Flynn’s brother “would tell Church Militant that Viganò had become the family’s spiritual guide.” Flynn is constantly responding to and republishing Vigano’s public statements on Twitter, including the June 20 announcement.
Flynn is not someone to be trusted, one for his close links to QAnon, but there is also much darker spookery afoot. Probably the most unsettling example was brought to my attention by my friend Unconscious Abyss on twitter. He posted a peculiar video last year.
Yes, it seems Flynn has some unaccountable connections to the I AM cult. But that is a tale for another day. The point is, if Vigano is the Flynn family’s spiritual leader, what does that say about his catholicity?
But even more concerning is Vigano’s connections to Russian networks. Vigano has frequently appeared on Russian state television and at the bizarre “International Movement of Russophiles” conferences.
Here he is enjoying the company of prestigious men such as Steven Seagal (lol).
[My friend on twitter Onetallorder (@onetallorfour) was the first to bring my attention to many of these connections, and I recommend following him as he has done some great work on all of this. He has personally assisted me with much of this information]
He frequently shares the stage in these conferences with various communists and the like, and stranger figures such as Aleksandr Dugin.
Dugin is another man drunk on eschatology, who reduces all geopolitical situations into apocalyptic mania. To give you a taste of what I am referring to, here is a more infamous tweet of his:
While I doubt that Vigano shares Dugin’s post-modern vision of multiple and simultaneous eschatons, each arising from a particular ethnocultural context, he certainly has bought into the Moscow/Third Rome cosmo-political vision. And this is simply incompatible with Roman Catholicism. To imply otherwise is to piss on a thousand years of Church history.
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I will not mince words. The West is in poor shape. Some kind of social virus has been unleashed. It is rotting our minds and moral fiber. But we will get out of it, it’s a phase, a latent seasonal allergy. The answer to the sickness is not to execute the patient. To hope for the destruction of our civilizational heritage. The extreme Russophilia and contempt for the “Satanic West” is a fool’s errand. There are plenty of Russian Nationalists and Russophiles who I quite like. Many westerners are Eastern Orthodox and rally behind Russia, and I understand their positions and respect it. But this is not the position to be held by a Roman Catholic Archbishop. This is not the stance of a Roman Catholic Hero.
I have many issues with the church historian Roberto de Mattei (especially with his misguided attacks on Andrea Cionci), but this excerpt from an article of his really gets to the heart of the issue:
One expression of this hatred of the West is "Russophilia," an intellectual tendency that became an international organization on March 14, 2023, with the presentation in Moscow of the "International Movement of Russophiles." Among the 120 representatives from 46 countries, chronicles report the presence of an Italian, Princess Vicky (Vittoria) Alliata di Villafranca, known for her keen interest in the Islamic world. Another well-known figure, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, addressed a warm message to the conference participants, stating, among other things, that "the Russian Federation undeniably stands as the last bastion of civilization against barbarism." The role of the Russian Federation "will be decisive" "in an 'Antiglobalist' Alliance that returns to citizens the power that has been taken from them, and to nations the sovereignty eroded and ceded to the Davos lobby."
Like any error, Russophilia starts from a truth: the decadence of the West, which has turned its back on its history and values. The Magisterium of the Catholic Church has pointed out as responsible for this decay an enemy that, "in recent centuries has attempted to work the intellectual, moral, social disintegration of the unity of the mysterious organism of Christ" (Pius XII, Address of Oct. 12, 1952 to the men of Catholic Action). ...
A Catholic cannot but fight this revolutionary process and desire with all his heart the restoration of a Christian West which, together with an East converted to the true Church, will form a single and universal civilization under the Empire of Christ. The mistake lies in imagining that the instrument of this restoration can be a country that has not yet fully emerged from Communism and that professes a strongly anti-Western and anti-Roman political religion.
The morally and intellectually corrupt West now exercises political and economic leadership in the world. "Russophiles" do not fight the West's moral intellectual corruption, but its geopolitical leadership. They do not want the West to cleanse itself of its errors, returning to its roots, but to disappear, or be radically downsized. What "Russophiles" call a "multipolar" world is the disappearance of the West's hegemonic role, the end of a "Eurocentric" civilization. And because nature abhors a vacuum, they know and wish for the leadership of the West to be replaced by that of a new international entity: the Eurasian Empire.
Behind every geopolitical reality is a worldview, which, in the case of Russophiles, is "national communism," or "red-brownism." David Bernardini, in a concise study devoted to National-Bolshevism. A Small History of Red-Brownism in Europe (Shake, Milan 2020), has traced the history of this ideological current, going back to the German Weimar Republic, which had its first theorist in Ernest Niekisch (1889-1967), one of the main protagonists of the Bavarian Soviet Revolution in 1919.
Niekisch and the National Bolsheviks admired the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin and celebrated the Soviet worker untainted by Western civilization. Their enemy was the international system of the Versailles Treaty, an expression of the West's will to dominate. The rejection of the West was linked in them with the rejection of Romanismus, that is, of Latin and Western Romanity. Europe, Romanism, Catholicism, Roman law, the West are for Niekisch all expressions of a single universe, Germany's enemy. The alliance with Bolshevik Russia was considered necessary to save German culture from the domination of Western civilization.
In those same years, the central thesis of the Eurasianist Nikolai Trubeckoj (1890-1938), professor of languages at the University of Vienna, was that the Russian people, like the eastern peoples, were suffering "under the oppressive yoke of the Romano-Germanic"; a yoke that could only be destroyed if Russia put itself at the head of a planetary insurrection with the aim of halting the Westernization process. It had to, in other words, expel from its bosom what Europe-"absolute evil"-had deposited and launch a revolutionary call to arms against the Western powers "to wipe all their culture off the face of the Earth" (N. Trubeckoj, Europe and Humanity, Einaudi, Turin 1982, pp. 66-70).
The Church has a duty to Her heritage. To the civilizational kernel that spawned her, to the soil from which she bloomed. She was at her best when she was defending Western civilization. In this sense, St Pius V was the greatest Pontiff of the last millennium. The man who grabbed the feuding European kings by their necks and forced them to gut the Turks, once and for all. Today we have a Pontiff who browbeats european nations over not taking in enough immigrants, during the greatest migratory crisis in recent memory. A Pope who makes secret deals with the Chinese Communist Party. And his great rebuker? His “prophetic” opposition? A man who hates the west and hopes for an Asiatic civilizational savior from the east. In other words, another third worldist who has passively accepted generations of communist propaganda, who has turned his back on our civilizational heritage, who plays the prophet while doing the bidding of the Babylonians. His eschaton is not with the coming of Christ, but the coming of a Saoshyant.
In the words of Pope Benedict XVI:
"There is here a self-hatred of the West which is strange and which can only be regarded as something pathological; the West tries yes in a laudable way to open itself full of understanding to external values, but it no longer loves itself; of its history it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure. Europe needs a new--certainly critical and humble--acceptance of itself if it really wants to survive." (Without Roots, cit., pp.70-71)
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The eschatological cataract is every bit as blinding as it is contagious. There are many men today who wish to play John the Baptist, to rebuke the West, and see salvation in Russia. It is a deeply stupid impulse, both theologically and geopolitically. I admit that I for a brief time fell under this spell.
I— like many others— saw Vigano as a hero. But I was not searching for a man, I was searching for an archetype. A piece of myth, a recapitulation to the days of the prophets. Man has drunk himself sick with eschatology. He can’t see straight, his vision is blurred. He squints his eyes and the figures in his periphery become harbingers, men reduced to signs of the times. Every reported geopolitical action is integrated into the eschaton, every news bulletin a confirmation of what he already holds to be true.
Vigano is not a prophet, nor a hero. He is a geopolitical actor playing an old game. Parolin is playing too, and I do not doubt that his intentions are even darker than Vigano’s. I do not know how the game will end. All I know is that there are no heroes in Rome.
I have said, You are gods; you are sons of the most High.
But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.
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