Archbishop Viganò excommunicated - Vatican

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 5 - The Vatican said Friday that Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Holy See's former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, has been excommunicated by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for the canonical crime of schism.
    The 83-year-old ultra conservative is a big critic of Pope Francis.
    In 2018 he called on Francis to resign, saying he was part of a "cover-up" involving former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who the pope subsequently defrocked over sexual-assault allegations.
    Viganò is also one of the Catholic conservatives to have criticized Francis for opening up to gays and remarried divorcés, and for bemoaning unfettered capitalism and climate change.
    "On 4 July 2024, the Congress of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith met to conclude the extrajudicial penal process referred to in canon 1720 CIC against the Most Reverend Carlo Maria Viganò, titular Archbishop of Ulpiana, accused of the reserved delict of schism," the Vatican said in a statement.
    "His public statements manifesting his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with the members of the Church subject to him, and of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council are well known.
    "At the conclusion of the penal process, the Most Reverend Carlo Maria Viganò was found guilty of the reserved delict of schism.
    "The Dicastery declared the latae sententiae excommunication...
    "The lifting of the censure in these cases is reserved to the Apostolic See.
    "This decision was communicated to the Most Reverend Viganò on 5 July 2024".
    After being put on trial, Viganò said he considered the accusations against him "an honour," describing the Second Vatican Council as an "ideological, theological, moral, and liturgical cancer," of which "the Synodal Church" is a "metastasis." In letters that went public in the Vatileaks scandal, Viganò also said he was moved from a previous role as governor of the Vatican city state for clamping down on corruption. (ANSA).