++Viganò: A Call for the Defense of Contemplative Women Religious

Contemplative convents do not mean much to the current Church leadership in Santa Marta.  The Church is to be cleansed of them, especially those associated with the traditional Rite.

 By Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

It is with deep sadness and vivid indignation that I follow the events in connection with the apostolic visitations carried out by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in some convents of contemplative life in the United States in recent days.

The manner in which these visitations are carried out in violation of canonical norms and the most elementary legal principles, the intimidations and threats that characterize the interrogations of the nuns, the psychological violence perpetrated against the members of the monasteries, which violate the principles of charity and justice, by which the functionaries of a papal dicastery should be guided, make visible in all their disturbing obviousness, the real intentions of persecution by the visitors, the cynical executors of those already introduced by the prefect Cardinal João Braz de Aviz and the secretary Msgr. José Rodriguez. Orders given to Carballo are based on precise instructions from Bergoglio.  Whichever community is targeted by them, the bullying by the visitors with the aim of dividing the sisters is always the same, as is the attempt to create severe disturbance up to and including violation of the intimate sphere in people through strong psychological pressure who are used to living in the silence and contemplation of prayer and penance.

Behind this purge, like everything that characterizes the work of the Bergoglian Church, there is a hatred and an iconoclastic anger towards the communities of contemplative life, especially those associated with tradition and the ancestral Rite.  It is a hatred that came into practice with Cor Oran's sinister instruction and its cruel and merciless application.  There is also an unhealthy interest in the money and donations these communities receive, which the Vatican is trying to usurp on any pretext.

This hatred is neither legally nor disciplinarily justified, since these monasteries targeted by the Vatican simply live according to the charisma peculiar to their order, in loyalty to their holy founders and in a spirit of sincere communion with the Church.  Their vocations increase, as happens in all institutes where the rule of the founders is put into practice and the Tridentine liturgy is celebrated.  The “guilt” of these religious is that they want to remain faithful to the unchangeable Magisterium of the Church, its two thousand year tradition and its venerable liturgy.  In short, this is the “fault” of all secular institutes and religious orders, whether male or female, in the eyes of a ruthless, destructive approach. 

I consider it my duty as Shepherd to undertake to denounce with all seriousnes, the systematic work of destruction by the Congregation for Religious, whose leaders make no secret of their aversion to any form of consecrated life, in complete agreement with their sponsor and the unsettling, lazy silence of the ordinaries who do not, yet are able to defend and protect the most valuable and vulnerable part of the mystical body.

We must not forget that the merciless persecution by the Vatican has already plagued flourishing female religious orders that have now been completely destroyed: I am thinking of the Franciscan Sisters of Immaculate (Italy), the Little Sisters of Mary of Saint-Aignan-sur-Roë (France) , the School Sisters in Auerbach (Germany), the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit (France) - to name just a few.

I also remind you that the proponents of this action are the first against whom a disciplinary investigation should have been launched after Carballo was involved in very serious financial scandals while he was Minister General of the Franciscans.  His position has been so compromised that it was necessary to house him in the Vatican, although the secretaries of the congregation usually reside outside the Leonine Walls.  Cardinal Braz de Aviz, a notorious supporter of liberation theology, was appointed by Bergoglio to head the Congregation of Religious  to “transform” the consecrated according to the Stalinist methods characteristic of the government of the Bergoglian Deep Church.  It’s a purge worthy of the worst dictatorial regimes and suited to the climate of terror that has ruled the Vatican since 2013.

I urge my fellow bishops, priests and especially the laity to speak out against the destruction of contemplative monasteries and traditional religious communities.  It is necessary to give not only spiritual and moral support to the victims of an aggression that intensified in the weeks after the proclamation of the Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes, but also material and media support so that the persecuted religious women can be defended and those responsible for  this persecution, which is despicable in the eyes of God and of the entire ecclesial community, should be denounced.

I understand very well how difficult it is, in the face of the perversion of ecclesiastical authority, to reconcile the solemn vow of obedience to superiors with the manifestly evil aims which they pursue;  and how painful it is to oppose those who are to exercise authority in the name of our Lord.  Nevertheless, any collaboration would be a form of complicity and culpable complicity.  Obedience to God and loyalty to the Church cannot be combined with blind submission to those who are enemies of both: “One must obey God more than men”, as St. Peter says (Acts 5:29).  This applies to both religious and secular clergy, whose silence can no longer continue in the face of the dissolution of the church bodies.

In view of this serious conflict of conscience in which the religious find themselves, I direct a special appeal to the lay people and benefactors of the women's monasteries to work actively, also with the help of appropriate legal means, to guarantee and protect the independence of the monasteries and their property.

I assure the persecuted women religious of my constant prayer and invite them to resist with steadfastness and courage and to sacrifice their sufferings for the conversion of their persecutors.  May these silent brides of Christ connect spiritually with the painful ordeal of the Carmelites of Compiègne, the sixteen nuns who were guillotined during the Terror, the reign of terror in the French Revolution, because they did not want to leave their Carmelite monastery and not renounce their religious vows.  May the heroic resistance of these consecrated women, persecuted in the odium fidei by bloodthirsty revolutionaries, be an example in these times of apostasy, when anti-Catholic persecution and ideological anger are promoted by those who consider the communities of contemplative life who should see them as the most precious treasure of the Church and protect them as the most effective means against the attacks of the enemy.  If the constant prayer of these blessed souls fails, the Church body will be even more disarmed at that moment in the midst of the raging of this momentous battle.

 Like the wise virgins in the parable of the Gospel (Mt 25: 1–13), women religious should remain loyal to the divine Bridegroom and wait for him with burning lamps.  These dark times will pass, and with them the apostates who rage against them.

The leadership of the Vatican, and especially Jorge Mario Bergoglio, will have to answer to God for this grave guilt of the Congregation for the Order, which is not without worrying ideological connotations: for the abuse of its authority against the good of the Church and against the salvation of souls.  May the Lord open the eyes of the many who still refuse to see the apostasy that plagues the Catholic hierarchy.

 + Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

 former Apostolic Nuncio in the United States

 October 1, 2021

 Translation: Giuseppe Nardi

HT to Anonymous 6:16 for the videos

 Image: Wikicommons

Trans: Tancred vemron99@hotmail.com

AMDG