Despite the Catholic left’s collusion with the mainstream media to discredit Archbishop Viganò’s testimony as a work of fringe fantasy, the emerging evidence continues to support the former Nuncio’s allegations that high-ranking Vatican prelates actively covered for disgraced D.C. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
On Friday, Catholic News Service released a letter from 2006, addressed to a New York priest, confirming that Vatican officials knew of then-Cardinal McCarrick’s illicit relations with seminarians.
According to the timeline of events, Father Boniface Ramsey blew the whistle on McCarrick in 2000 when he wrote a letter to Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, the then-Nuncio from the Vatican to the United States, informing him of seminarians’ complaints about McCarrick’s behavior during their time at Immaculate Conception Seminary in New Jersey, where McCarrick served as rector. Father Ramsey served on the faculty of the seminary from 1986 to 1996.
Six years would pass before Father Ramsey received a response letter from the Vatican substitute for general affairs, Archbishop Sandri, inquiring about a New Jersey priest who had studied at Immaculate Conception Seminary and was being vetted for a post in a Vatican office. The letter was dated October 11, 2006.
“I ask with particular reference to the serious matters involving some of the students of the Immaculate Conception Seminary, which in November 2000 you were good enough to bring confidentially to the attention of the then Apostolic Nuncio in the United States, the late Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo,” the letter from Archbishop Sandri stated.
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Regarding the original 2000 letter, Father Ramsey told CNS, “I complained about McCarrick’s relationships with seminarians and the whole business with sleeping with seminarians and all of that; the whole business that everyone knows about. My letter November 22, 2000, was about McCarrick and it wasn’t accusing seminarians of anything; it was accusing McCarrick.”
Father Ramsey never received a formal response to his 2000 letter; it was not until the 2006 letter from Archbishop Sandri that he knew the Vatican had indeed received his testimony about McCarrick.
As noted by Catholic News Service, the 2006 letter further supports claims made by Archbishop Viganò, who said in an 11-page letter that the Vatican knew about McCarrick as early as 2000, when Pope John Paul II was in power. Pope Benedict XVI ascended to the papacy in 2005 and allegedly placed private sanctions on McCarrick that were then overturned by Pope Francis in 2013, according to Viganò’s account.
Investigations into Viganò’s claims have only strengthened their credibility.