Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Catholic Church ambassador and a critic of Pope Francis, has revealed that the Vatican is putting him on trial for rejecting the pontiff's legitimacy.
The 83-year-old ultraconservative, who served as the Vatican's US ambassador from 2011 to 2016, said the powerful doctrine department called him on Thursday to hear the claims.
In a blog post published in multiple languages on X, Vigano stated that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith made allegations "of having committed the crime of schism"—that is, of separating the Catholic Church.
Vigano wrote that he was also charged with "denying the legitimacy of 'Pope Francis', of having broken communion 'with Him', and of having rejected the Second Vatican Council" in the 1960s, which set the Church on a modernizing path.
The former Italian archbishop said he faced an "extrajudicial penal trial," an expedited process.
"I regard the accusations against me as an honour," he stated before going into a long attack against the pope.
He criticized Francis's welcoming to illegal migrants, his "delirious encyclicals" on climate change, and his approval of blessings for same-sex couples, accusing him of boosting his supporters.
"I repudiate, reject, and condemn the scandals, errors, and heresies of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who manifests an absolutely tyrannical management of power," he said, using the Argentine pope's name.
In 2018, Vigano, supported by an ultra-conservative minority of the US church, advocated for Pope Francis' resignation.
He accused him, in particular, of ignoring sexual assault claims against a then-top US cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked the following year by Francis.
Vigano was previously the governor of the Vatican City state, and in leaked letters to the pope, he claimed that he was being pursued for preventing fraud.
