TESTIMONY
by
His Excellency Carlo Maria Viganò
Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana
Apostolic Nuncio
In this tragic moment for the Church in various parts of the world — the United States, Chile, Honduras,
Australia, etc. — bishops have a very grave responsibility. I am thinking in particular of the United States
of America, where I was sent as Apostolic Nuncio by Pope Benedict XVI on October 19, 2011, the
memorial feast of the First North American Martyrs. The Bishops of the United States are called, and I
with them, to follow the example of these first martyrs who brought the Gospel to the lands of America,
to be credible witnesses of the immeasurable love of Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Bishops and priests, abusing their authority, have committed horrendous crimes to the detriment of their
faithful, minors, innocent victims, and young men eager to offer their lives to the Church, or by their
silence have not prevented that such crimes continue to be perpetrated.
To restore the beauty of holiness to the face of the Bride of Christ, which is terribly disfigured by so many
abominable crimes, and if we truly want to free the Church from the fetid swamp into which she has
fallen, we must have the courage to tear down the culture of secrecy and publicly confess the truths we
have kept hidden. 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. “Whatever you have said in the dark ... shall be proclaimed from the housetops”
(Lk. 12:3).
I had always believed and hoped that the hierarchy of the Church could find within itself the spiritual
resources and strength to tell the whole truth, to amend and to renew itself. That is why, even though I
had repeatedly been asked to do so, I always avoided making statements to the media, even when it would
have been my right to do so, in order to defend myself against the calumnies published about me, even by
high-ranking prelates of the Roman Curia. But now that the corruption has reached the very top of the
Church’s hierarchy, my conscience dictates that I reveal those truths regarding the heart-breaking case of
the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, D.C., Theodore McCarrick, which I came to know in the course
of the duties entrusted to me by St. John Paul II, as Delegate for Pontifical Representations, from 1998 to
2009, and by Pope Benedict XVI, as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America, from October 19,
2011 until end of May 2016.
As Delegate for Pontifical Representations in the Secretariat of State, my responsibilities were not limited
to the Apostolic Nunciatures, but also included the staff of the Roman Curia (hires, promotions,
informational processes on candidates to the episcopate, etc.) and the examination of delicate cases,
including those regarding cardinals and bishops, that were entrusted to the Delegate by the Cardinal
Secretary of State or by the Substitute of the Secretariat of State.
To dispel suspicions insinuated in several recent articles, I will immediately say that the Apostolic
Nuncios in the United States, Gabriel Montalvo and Pietro Sambi, both prematurely deceased, did not fail
to inform the Holy See immediately, as soon as they learned of Archbishop McCarrick’s gravely immoral
behavior with seminarians and priests. Indeed, according to what Nuncio Pietro Sambi wrote, Father
Boniface Ramsey, O.P.’s letter, dated November 22, 2000, was written at the request of the late Nuncio
Montalvo. In the letter, Father Ramsey, who had been a professor at the diocesan seminary in Newark
from the end of the ’80s until 1996, affirms that there was a recurring rumor in the seminary that the
Archbishop “shared his bed with seminarians,” inviting five at a time to spend the weekend with him at