Your Excellency,

I have recently become greatly distressed after having read the testimony given by His Excellency, Carlo Marie Vigano, Apostolic Nuncio Emeritus to the United States of America, at Rome on August 22, 2018, the feast of the Queenship of Mary. In this testimony, the retired nuncio claims that former Cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, was alleged to have committed the “crimes of seducing, requesting depraved acts of seminarians and priests, repeatedly and simultaneously with several people, derision of a young seminarian who tried to resist the Archbishop’s seductions in the presence of two other priests, absolution of the accomplices in these depraved acts, [and] sacrilegious celebration of the Eucharist with the same priests after committing such acts.”

Archbishop Vigano further claims, and I believe in a credible way, that there exists an organized effort within the Church’s hierarchy to recruit, promote, and protect active and habitual violators of the Sixth Commandment within the clergy. These claims appear credible and require investigation. It is a grave scandal to me and to the faithful at large that the evangelical counsels are not demanded of our hierarchy and that the commitment to their marriage to the Church as an alter Christi is allowed to be defiled.

Today, I plead with you, as the representative of the Holy Father in the United States, for an Apostolic Visitation of the Church in the United States of America. It must be an Apostolic Visitation, either by legate or by commission, with plenipotentiary authority to follow any and all evidence and to be empowered to impose or declare penalties in the name of the Holy Father. Any commission established by the USCCB would lack the necessary authority and jurisdiction to impose or declare the appropriate penalties after guilt had been ascertained.

Further, the Church, as a creation of Divine Law, should not have to rely on the civil power, a creation of the Natural Law, to investigate and punish crimes. As a non-subject, this becomes a usurpation of authority by the secular state. Further, this usurpation has the potential to grow into a full-blown suppression of the organized Church in the United States. In any other instance of a religious organization behaving as an organized criminal syndicate, trafficking in violations of the sixth commandment with minors or in instances where the power imbalance is such that it is difficult to ascertain legitimate consent and recruiting, promoting, and protecting other like individuals, there would be public outcry to dismantle and suppress such an institution. Without swift and authoritative action, I fear that we might face the dismantling and suppression of the Church in the United States.

It would be best, therefore, for a plenipotentiary visitation of the United States. The plenipotentiary would be best equipped to investigate, impose, and declare the appropriate ecclesiastical sanctions for crimes against God, the Church, and the faithful People of God. Only following the appropriate penalties and the degradation and reduction of the guilty, would the plenipotentiary then turn over to the representatives of the City of Man he who was found wanting in the City of God. No longer a cleric of Christ’s Church (or perhaps worse), these habitual and nefarious actors against the Decalogue may be turned over to the civil authorities as to the sea while attached to a millstone.

Therefore, I renew my plea to you, as the Holy Father’s representative, for this Apostolic Visitation. You and your brother bishops who share authentic ministry have a responsibility to defend the sheep from the wolves. But the Holy Father has a supreme and prime responsibility in this regard, with regard to his universal and ordinary jurisdiction and with regard to his responsibility to confirm the brethren in their responsibility. I urge you to take this seriously and not to abdicate this responsibility of your office.

Please keep me in your prayers. Know that I remember you in mine.

Asking Your Excellency’s blessing,
I am, Yours Respectfully in Christ,