(LifeSiteNews) – Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published new claims that a network he calls ‘deep church’ has infiltrated the Catholic hierarchy.
Early this morning, March 6, Archbishop Viganò, a former papal nuncio to the United States, posted to X (formerly Twitter) answers to two sets of questions he said were posed him by The New York Times but went unpublished.
The first, he wrote, was “What is the state of the American church right now? What was the lasting impact of your 2018 letter and the concerns you raised about Pope Francis’ leadership?” The second, he added in a second tweet, was “How are those who have opposed the direction Pope Francis has taken the church working to correct course? What, if anything, is being done to make sure the next Pontiff will not repeat what many see as Francis’s shortcomings? Or is that futile?”
To the first question, touching on the Catholic Church in the United States, Viganò stated that the Catholic hierarchy “has been almost entirely composed of emissaries of a very powerful subversive lobby.”
The archbishop continued:
We have a deep church that has infiltrated and occupied the Catholic Church, as well as a deep state that controls the governments of many nations. The members of this counter-church have transformed the Catholic Church into an organization in support of the woke globalist Left, after having destroyed Faith and Morals and subverted the purposes that Our Lord Jesus Christ gave to His Church. The plan must be seen in its entirety: the deep state and the deep church are two sides of the same coin, and both take orders from the same master who finances them both, as we have seen in the USAID scandal.
Viganò said that to remove the ties between this “deep church” and the “globalist elite,” corrupt prelates and other clergy must be removed and their good confreres promoted:
It is necessary to break the bond of the deep church’s ideological and financial dependence on the globalist elite, by ousting corrupt and blackmailed cardinals, bishops, and priests, and instead promoting those whose lives are consistent with the Gospel and who have at heart the salvation of souls in fidelity to the perennial Tradition of the Catholic Church.
The archbishop stated that the American Church was in a “disasterous situation” and claimed it had been planned. He stated that the “systematic infiltration” could be traced to certain now-deceased churchmen:
The American Church – also thanks to the prominent role of the American Jesuits in the subversion of Catholic Doctrine – finds itself in a disastrous situation, deliberately planned in recent decades through a systematic infiltration that we can trace back to certain prominent figures: Cardinals Francis J. Spellman (New York), John F. Dearden (Detroit), Joseph Bernardin (Chicago), Raymond G. Hunthausen (Seattle), Roger Mahony (Los Angeles), William J. Levada (San Francisco).
The archbishop also named a series of living American prelates, whom he described as corrupt.
“They are all Bergoglio’s men, protected by him, promoted by him, and perhaps blackmailed by him,” he alleged. “Let us not forget the decisive role of the Seminaries, from where the infiltration and capillary corruption of the clergy started.”
Viganò believes that the American Church will emerge from the crisis he identifies if the faithful “cut the funding” and “support traditional Catholic communities instead” and “if the Trump Administration investigates and prosecutes” men in the hierarchy who “have committed crimes or tried to cover them up.”
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In regard to the second question, which touched on the prevention of another pontiff like Francis, the archbishop was dismissive of conservative cardinals who do not question “the Second Vatican Council and its disastrous reforms.” He alleged that Cardinals Raymond Burke and Robert Sarah fit this description. However, Viganò believes that this cannot happen anyway as “110 cardinals out of 138 cardinals have been created by Bergoglio precisely to “shield” the Bergoglian synodal revolution and guarantee that it continues.”
He continued:
Those who enter the Conclave thinking they only need to plug a few holes while continuing on a course that has proven to be a disaster – I am referring to the conciliar revolution – will not obtain any lasting results. There are now sixty years of errors and horrors that need to be completely reset: a titanic task, which only divine intervention can make possible.
Finally, Viganò threw doubt on the legitimacy of the cardinals chosen by Francis by repeating his accusation that the pontiff is a usurper.
Bergoglio’s usurpation – which I have denounced and which has earned me “excommunication” – undermines the legitimacy of the Cardinals he has created in these twelve years and the validity of the election of any Successor. This is why an operation of transparency and justice is needed before proceeding to convene a Conclave. To believe that the death of Bergoglio can make us simply forget everything and allow us to turn the page without doing anything, would be a very serious error and a betrayal of the mandate that Our Lord gave to the Apostles and their Successors.
LifeSiteNews has reached out to The New York Times for confirmation and is awaiting a response.
