(LifeSiteNews) — A few weeks ago, I made public the events surrounding my request to meet with Leo – specifically, his initial acceptance, his sudden rescission, and then his definitive cancellation. While a Catholic Archbishop was deemed unworthy of being received in Audience, an abortionist and heterodox figure – in the guise of an Anglican “Archbishop” – merited not only the full honors of Vatican protocol but was even permitted to engage in “communicatio in sacris” with Leo and other Prelates, going so far as to impart a “blessing” within the shrine of the Prince of the Apostles. This serves only as further proof of the double standard applied by the proponents of the “synodal church.” I do not believe it is necessary to dwell on this with further commentary ... After long months of silence, the time has come to make known the contents of my letter to Leo of January 25th of this year, thereby establishing a documentary record of the matter.

Holiness, with this letter, I wish to offer for your consideration the salient events of my personal and ministerial life, so that you may get to know me and understand the intentions that motivate me.

I was born in Varese on January 16, 1941, into a deeply Catholic family, thanks to which I was able to grow up practicing my Faith daily, receiving a solid higher education, and maturing my vocation to the Priesthood. I was ordained a priest on March 24, 1968, and, after a brief period of parish ministry in Pavia, I was invited by the then-Substitute of the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Giovanni Benelli, to enter the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, where I was admitted in October 1971. I served five Popes: first in the Nunciatures of Baghdad, Kuwait, and London; then from January 1978 in the Secretariat of State for over ten years as Secretary to three Substitutes; and then as Permanent Observer to the Council of Europe and the European Parliament in Strasbourg (1988-1992). After my episcopal consecration, received from the hands of John Paul II, I was sent to Nigeria as Apostolic Nuncio (1992-1998), then recalled to the Secretariat of State as the Delegate for Pontifical Representations (1998-2009). In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed me Secretary General of the Governorate of Vatican City State, and then in 2011 as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America until 2016.

It was in my role as Delegate for Pontifical Representations that I found myself handling the investigative processes for promotions to the Episcopate, both in the Roman Curia and in the Nunciatures, as well as the most confidential and delicate cases concerning Bishops and Cardinals, including the dossier of Theodore McCarrick and other homosexual prelates. My actions in this area led to my removal from the Secretariat of State and my transfer to the Governorate as Secretary General, where Pope Benedict entrusted me with combating mismanagement and the vast network of financial corruption. Even in that case, despite having brought the Governorate’s budget, in the space of a year and a half, from a deficit of 15 million Euros to a profit of 35 million, and despite the Pope wanting to promote me to the Presidency of the Pontifical Council for Economic Affairs of the Holy See, I was removed from the Roman Curia and sent to Washington as Nuncio. My actions disturbed people who at the time were very powerful and capable of overriding the will of Pope Benedict.

In 2016, exactly on my seventy-fifth birthday, Bergoglio ordered me to leave the Nunciature in Washington and forbade me from returning to the Vatican, where John Paul II had permanently assigned me an apartment; he also forbade me from residing in the Roman residence for retired Nuncios that was specially prepared by Pope Benedict. Before his death, Bergoglio also had my Vatican citizenship and passport revoked; he prevented me from accessing the healthcare services provided to members of the Diplomatic Service, even though I had always regularly paid my contributions; and he ordered that my car be removed from the Vatican Vehicle Registry and prevented the renewal of my Vatican driver’s license, which I had held continuously since 1973, causing me serious difficulties and effectively condemning me to house arrest.

In August 2018 I published the explosive memorandum about Theodore McCarrick and the extensive network of corruption and complicity within the Roman Curia, which directly involved Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself. Subsequently, I lived for several years in secret locations, as Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke advised me to do, given the threats I received and the fact that my immediate predecessor in Washington, Nuncio Pietro Sambi, had died under very suspicious circumstances after having had heated confrontations with then-Cardinal McCarrick when informing him of the measures taken by Benedict XVI to counter his crimes as a serial abuser.

The corruption, blackmail, deception, and betrayals I have had to confront have led me to question the deep origins of the disastrous state of the Catholic Church.

Looking back on the years of my formation, at the Lateran University (1960-1964) and then at the Gregorian University (1965-1969), I had to acknowledge that even before the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, the ideological framework of the entire curriculum – and of the teaching staff – was already shaped by the new conciliar teachings, even though they had not yet been approved. I remember well how in the Roman Seminaries clerical discipline gave way to anarchy on all fronts, and how the superiors encouraged the participation of seminarians in the conferences of the “new theologians” – I am referring to those who, until a few years earlier, were viewed with justified suspicion by the Holy Office, such as Küng, Ratzinger, Rahner, Schillebeeckx, Congar, and with them that undergrowth of modernists who would soon infest the university chairs and positions of responsibility in the Vatican and in the dioceses. And as has always happened with all subversive operations, the climate of general change, continuous reforms, and enormous transformations was artificially created from above.

From my privileged vantage point as Secretary to the Substitute, I witnessed the hemorrhaging of thousands of priestly and religious vocations, while those Priests who did not want to support the new conciliar path nor abandon the Tridentine Liturgy were ostracized, treated as heretics, excommunicated or suspended a divinis, deprived of their salaries, and left to die in solitude.

Reconsidering those events and reforms with today’s disillusioned perspective and with the experience gained from other similar events – not least the manipulation of the “Synod on the Family” that led to Amoris Lætitia and, above all, the ongoing synodal revolution – I could not help but see in all of this a mindset that had already prepared the subversive action that would soon show its most disruptive effects.

The conciliar revolution followed a very precise script under a single direction. Everything had to appear perfectly legal and in accordance with the ordinary practice of the Church: every document promulgated had to allow for both an orthodox interpretation with which to reassure the Council Fathers as well as a heretical interpretation to be unleashed later. These documents reveal the true intentions of those who maliciously used a Council to impose doctrinal, moral, and liturgical errors that had previously been condemned by the Roman Pontiffs.

During the long years of my ministry in the service of the Apostolic See, my unconditional obedience to the Popes and my complete absorption in the duties entrusted to me prevented me from understanding the true revolution that was underway. How could I have imagined the subversion and betrayal that were taking place? How could I have believed that the Supreme Authority of the Church and the entire Episcopate could have become accomplices of the most insidious enemies of Christ, whom Saint Pius X had identified as the Modernists?

The “retirement” imposed on me in 2016 allowed me to dedicate myself to prayer, study, and meditation on these serious problems. I thus came to the realization that the Second Vatican Council, while maintaining the characteristics of an Ecumenical Council, was intended to be used to revolutionize the entire ecclesial structure and subvert it in all its components: in doctrine, liturgy, discipline, canon law, and especially in its hierarchical constitution. The very architects of Vatican II defined it as “the 1789 of the Church”, considering their subversive experiment to be “the Council par excellence” thus demonstrating its heterogeneity compared to all other Councils and the perennial Tradition of the Church.

Both Jorge Bergoglio and all the post-conciliar popes proudly claimed their ideological continuity with Vatican II in order to implement and legitimize all their “reforms.” Significantly, the entire “post-conciliar magisterial corpus” establishes a new paradigm sanctioned by the Council. Its fluid doctrines – constantly evolving, just as the Hegelian synthesis they underpin is constantly evolving – are in clear rupture with the two-thousand-year-old Magisterium of the Church prior to Vatican II.

The Council facilitated and contributed to the de-Christianization of the West and the establishment, in the civil sphere, of a new order conforming to the designs of Freemasonry. The plans of the Lodges are well known, and we are aware that they involved infiltrating the Catholic Church and attacking Her from within to achieve their predetermined goals.

The discussio surrounding Vatican II and the coup within the Church led me to rediscover the Traditional Rite relatively recently. Abandoning the Montini Mass marked a new phase in my episcopal Ministry. Along with the Tridentine Mass (which was the one used at my priestly Ordination), I discovered a hidden world of persecuted and marginalized priests, religious, and seminarians. I considered it my apostolic duty to listen to their cry for help, offering them a response that would restore their trust in the Church from which they felt betrayed and cast out. This led me to establish the Exsurge Domine Foundation, doing everything necessary to guarantee the means of subsistence – both spiritual and material – and an authentically Catholic ecclesial identity to those who, due to their fidelity to Tradition, have been unjustly affected by the Bergoglian Terror.

Among those I support are the members of the Familia Christi Priestly Fraternity, which was first founded and recognized within the framework of Ecclesia Dei and then brutally destroyed and dissolved. Its members have been victims of a terrible persecution – of which you cannot be unaware – by the current Archbishop of Ferrara, Gian Carlo Perego, and the Holy See itself. To these clerics, who turned to me after being abandoned to their own devices without support, and to the candidates for the priesthood who have joined them, I am providing my paternal care.

My denunciation of the apostasy of the conciliar and synodal church and its rupture with Tradition, along with my well-founded doubts about the legitimacy of Bergoglio’s “pontificate”— which I addressed in good conscience, believing I was fulfilling my mandate as a Successor of the Apostles — earned me an unjust, illegitimate, and ideologically motivated excommunication. This canonical sanction, although I consider it null, has serious ecclesial, institutional, and personal repercussions that deeply sadden me and that stand in stark contrast to the impunity enjoyed by notoriously heretical and corrupt cardinals, bishops, and priests.

Among these individuals, I cannot fail to mention Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzales, known in Chiclayo as “Padre Lute,” who has been accused of sexually abusing several young victims. The Holy See recently granted “padre Lute” dismissal from the clerical state without a regular canonical trial, effectively leaving him unpunished; while the victims’ canon lawyer, Monsignor Ricardo Coronado Arrascue was removed from his legal functions, reduced to the lay state, and investigated on defamatory charges. The entire affair has been documented and explained to me in detail by Monsignor Coronado himself. This case repeats the same modus operandi of Bergoglio previously adopted with McCarrick and reveals an aberrant administration of justice by the Holy See.

In the face of the excommunication unjustly imposed upon me, I declare that I am not a schismatic! By the grace of God, I am and will remain a devout son of the Holy Roman Church and a faithful subject of the Roman Pontificate. I firmly believe in the Apostolic Communion, and I recognize the Petrine Primacy. I likewise recognize the necessity of belonging not only to the invisible Mystical Body, but also to the institutional and visible ecclesial body.

All the popes in history up to Pius XII have been indicted along with me, placed on trial by the former Holy Office.

I have repeatedly wondered about the reason for the persecution I am facing in the final phase of my earthly life; and whether my conviction that I have acted rightly and according to God’s will might have been mistaken. But however much I examine my actions as if I were standing before Christ the Judge at the moment of my death, I find nothing morally wrong. My accusers have merely followed a predetermined sentence, in order to remove, by means of a “canonical” stratagem, the one who has denounced the infidelity of the Catholic Hierarchy, proclaiming the Truth without restraint. A voice – my own – that could not be silenced for the simple reason that no one has ever been able to corrupt or blackmail me.

The officials of the former Holy Office were unable to refute a single one of the arguments I presented. But it was enough for them that I dared to criticize Vatican II and Jorge Mario Bergoglio to condemn me to excommunication for the crime of schism, precisely when it is my love for the Papacy and for the perennial Magisterium of the Church that exposes me to this ruthless attack from the Vatican. I have never intended to separate myself from the Apostolic Communion, nor to disobey the Vicar of Christ, nor to found a “parallel church,” as some have accused me of wanting to do. On the contrary, I believe, that I could not have served the Papacy and the Holy Church better than by speaking and acting as I did, facing the sufferings that resulted from it in a spirit of union with the sufferings of the Divine Redeemer.

I am writing to you as an elderly Archbishop, out of love for Our Lord and in fidelity to the Holy Church. I am writing to you to express my anguish at seeing the Catholic Church eclipsed and disfigured by those who occupy Her and hold power within Her. I cannot understand how, after the disastrous experience of Jorge Bergoglio, you not only refuse to condemn his errors and scandals, but also seize every opportunity to reaffirm your complete continuity with them, in the name of a “synodal church” that adulterates the hierarchical structure and monarchical nature that Our Lord willed for His Church, and demolishes its entire doctrinal edifice.

I appeal to another Leo, the great Pope Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci, in the paradoxical situation of knowing that he would find my words agreeable and praiseworthy, while the Bergoglian church has judged them to be schismatic. What has happened in the Catholic Church in the space of a few decades, that I find myself condemned, and with me all the pre-conciliar Popes? Quomodo facta est meretrix civitas fidelis? (Is 1:21).

The Faith I profess, the Tridentine Mass I celebrate, the Councils and magisterial acts I accept, the Professio Fidei Tridentina and the Jusiurandum Antimodernisticum that I have repeated so many times, are common to the entire Church and unite me to Her. Of this One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church, unchanged in doctrine and morals, I declare myself a devoted son and servant. That Papacy, likewise unchanged, is the Roman Papacy to which I am obedient, for in the voice of the Vicar resounds the Truth of the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (Jn 10:11).

The authority of the Holy Keys must open the gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem to the righteous and exclude the wicked, not the other way around. This authority emanates from Our Lord (Rom 13:1) – and is vicarious of His Authority. It is not possible for it to be used to legitimize what He condemns, nor even less to condemn what He has commanded to be done. For this reason, I cannot obey those who, constituted in authority, refuse to be themselves subject and obedient to the Supreme Authority of God.

I think of the words of Saint Paul: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be anathema!” (Gal 1:8) From which Church am I separated? And what authority has condemned me? The authority of the Vicar of Christ? Or that of those who preach a different gospel from the one received from Our Lord?

I leave this letter in your hands, so that you may understand the reasons for my positions and action, in the hope of encouraging you to a profound examination of conscience and to a necessary and urgent conversion of heart, mind, and will, mindful of the words of Our Lord: “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Lk 22:31-32). I ask you to exercise your supreme Authority to confirm the brethren in the Faith. I ask you to confirm me in the Faith: please do so. Or tell me where I am erring and in what I am contradicting the Depositum Fidei that you must safeguard and upon which Catholic Unity is based. It is on the profession of the True Faith that I must be judged: therefore, tell me in what way I have contradicted the Catholic Faith, and I will amend myself.

But there are no arguments that legitimize my excommunication: it was imposed on me illegitimately, to destroy my person and my action in defense of Catholic Truth; a sanction motivated not least by the implacable hatred of Jorge Mario Bergoglio towards me. An injustice that demands reparation for the grave damage caused to me and to the Cause of the Holy Roman Church.

I trust that you will still want to grant me an audience after the cancellation of the one that had been scheduled and then cancelled on December 11, 2025. I will then be able to communicate to you in person some matters of the utmost importance relating to my apostolic Ministry and the need to ensure its continuity and future.

From this moment forward, I renew my unconditional intention to fulfill every obligation imposed on me as a Successor of the Apostles.

In Christo Rege,

+ Carlo Maria Viganò
Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana, Apostolic Nuncio

Viterbo, 25 January 2026
In Conversione S. Pauli Apostoli