The story behind Archbishop Vigano's polemic against Pope Francis just got more complicated

A letter from Archbishop Carlo Mari Vigano accusing Pope Francis of covering up disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick's alleged sexual misconduct with men training to be priests was released Sunday morning, on the final day of the pope's visit to Ireland. That was on purpose, Italian journalist and conservative blogger Marco Tosatti tells The Associated Press, saying he persuaded Vigano to go public with his allegations, helped write and edit his 11-page letter, and found conservative Catholic outlets that would publish it on Sunday morning.

Vigano claims that Pope Benedict XVI quietly ordered McCarrick to a life of secluded prayer and penance but that when Benedict stepped down, Francis rehabilitated the cardinal and lifted the sanctions until news of McCarrick's alleged sexual misconduct became public. "Vigano called for Francis to resign over what he said was complicity in covering up McCarrick's crimes," AP says. "There is ample evidence, however, that the Vatican under Benedict and St. John Paul II also covered up that information, and that any sanctions Benedict imposed were never enforced."

Tosatti, a leading critic of Pope Francis, tells AP that Vigano called him a few weeks ago and told him the information that formed the basis of his letter. He wasn't prepared to go public, but after a Pennsylvania grand jury released a searing report documenting decades of child sexual abuse by priests kept quiet by church officials, Tosatti said he called Vigano and asked him to reconsider. "I think that if you want to say something, now is the moment, because everything is going upside-down in the United States," Tosatti said he told Vigano. "He said 'Okay.'" Tosatti said they worked on the document for three hours, with Tosatti suggesting cuts that couldn't be substantial "because it had to be absolutely waterproof."

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The pope declined to comment on Vigano's letter, saying he trusted journalists to look into it and come to their own conclusions.