EXCLUSIVE: Abp. Viganò says Leo XIV has intensified Francis’s agenda, not slowed it

(LifeSiteNews) — In Part 1 of this interview, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò claimed that the reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council weakened the Church’s role as the katéchon, the force that restrains the spread of the Antichrist’s spirit in history. He discussed the nature of papal authority, the distinction between the papacy as a divine institution and individual popes while critiquing of post-conciliar developments, the rise of synodality, and women in Vatican leadership.

This second part of the interview centers on Viganò’s critique of the post-conciliar Church, focusing on liturgical reform and Traditionis Custodes as instruments of a broader theological transformation. He also discusses the pontificate of Leo XIV, particularly the allegations of networks of protection among ecclesiastical elites, and the influence of ideological and global forces on the contemporary hierarchy.

LifeSiteNews: Throughout this entire crisis, you have always identified the liturgical reform not as a consequence but as a cause. Why is the question of the Mass, in your judgment, prior to and more decisive than the doctrinal one? And what meaning does the relentlessness of Traditionis Custodes, maintained intact by Leo XIV, have in this context?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: Because the Church has always known what the modernists deliberately forgot: ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi (“that the law of prayer may establish the law of belief”). It is the law of prayer that establishes the law of faith, and not vice versa. The Christian people do not learn dogma from manuals: they breathe it in at the altar. A man who for years knelt before the Blessed Sacrament, who has seen the priest turned toward God and not toward the assembly, who witnessed the Consecration in the sacred silence of the Roman Canon, believes in the Real Presence and in the Sacrifice, even if he would not know how to formulate the corresponding dogmas; and no theologian will succeed in taking that faith away from him. Change the way a person prays, and you change what he believes, without him noticing and without anyone ever having to state a single heretical proposition.

That is why I say that the liturgical reform was not a consequence of the crisis: it was its instrument. It was the fastest and safest way to obtain what a definition would never have achieved. Let it be noted: it is the perfect application of that Bergoglian principle according to which “time is superior to space.” Nothing is defined, a process is initiated, and then all it takes is a couple of generations for the rest to fall into place. Anyone who wants confirmation of this method should read the Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, who as early as 1969 warned that the new rite “departs impressively, as a whole and in detail, from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass as formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent.” They were not two seditionists: one was the former secretary of the Holy Office and the other a curial cardinal. They were ignored, and today the statistics on belief in the Real Presence confirm how right they were. Cranmer understood four centuries earlier that changing the Mass is enough to change the religion of a people, and he did not need to deny any dogma in order to eradicate the Holy Sacrifice from England.

As for Traditionis Custodes, it is the most eloquent confession our adversaries could have made. If the two rites truly expressed the same faith [the vetus ordo and novus ordo], persecuting one of them would be an inexplicable whim: they persecute it because they know perfectly well that they do not express the same faith, and that as long as a single altar safeguards the ancient lex orandi, the new one cannot claim victory.

It should also be noted that under Prevost, Traditionis Custodes has neither been withdrawn nor mitigated: instead, it has been applied even more rigidly, with a meticulousness that Bergoglio did not have time to exercise. That Leo himself – who speaks so much of welcome and listening – should be so relentless in opposing the Mass of all time proves to those who still hoped in him that in the synodal church there is room for everything except the rite in which the Church prayed for centuries.

READ: Archbishop Viganò: A Pope who wanted to purify the Church wouldn’t appoint McCarrick men

LSN: Prevost was elected thanks to those who hoped for a restoration of the juridical order, but in fact he seems to be continuing his predecessor’s agenda, simply slowing its pace and delegating the most contentious decisions to the Curia. Does this more phlegmatic and “dialoguing” style not risk being even more insidious for the defense of dogma than Francis’s direct authoritarianism?

Viganò: I must correct the premise of the question, because it is precisely the misunderstanding on which Prevost relies. It is not at all accurate to say that Leo is proceeding “little by little.” He is proceeding by means of forced marches, without the slightest concern for reactions – also because negative reactions are few, and those few are promptly suppressed. What changed, if compared with Bergoglio, is not the speed: it is the face. Bergoglio shouted, and whoever shouts wakes people up; Prevost smiles, and whoever smiles puts people to sleep. But it is an icy smile, the smirk of one who knows he will meet no resistance.

Look at the facts, not at the manner. The agenda has not been slowed down: it has been intensified on every front – synodality, environmentalism, pro-immigration policies, syncretic ecumenism, normalization of LGBT ideology. And above all, look at the appointments, which are the acid test of a pontificate: there is not a single one that makes an exception; not one man of sound doctrine promoted, not one enemy of the faith removed. On every front, Prevost has gone beyond his predecessor.

On August 13, in Cusco, at a conference preparing for Prevost’s journey to Peru, Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu – pontifical commissioner of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – placed coca leaves in an offering to the infernal idol Pachamama together with Bishop Lizardo Estrada Herrera, auxiliary bishop of Cusco and secretary general of CELAM, and Bishop Miguel Ángel Cadenas, bishop of Iquitos. Under Bergoglio, the Pachamama entered the Vatican Gardens and St. Peter’s Basilica as a scandalous gesture; under Prevost, the Pachamama entered the dicastery whose task ought to be to condemn it – and that idol entered it at the hands of the man who, within that dicastery, administers justice. This is not a slowing down: it is an institutionalization.

Leo’s style is measured only in appearance. The Latin here and there, the mozzetta worn even in inappropriate circumstances – even when getting off the plane – the courteous tone: these are anesthetics administered to a body now incapable of reacting. And the anesthetic does not lessen the violence: the anesthetic is what makes the violence possible.

The conservatives have allowed themselves to be enchanted by the form. But in truth there is not even that. Those who were satisfied by the mozzetta got the mozzetta and nothing else, and are now paying for that piece of cloth with silence about everything else.

Finally, there is the aspect that reveals the authentically tyrannical nature of this government, and that is delegation. Prevost delegates to the Curia, to the dicasteries, to episcopal conferences, to the “synodal processes,” so that no decision bears his signature and each one can be presented as the fruit of collective discernment. This is not mildness: it is the most perfect form of absolute power, one that exercises command without assuming responsibility for it. The ancient tyrant signed his edicts and bore the hatred they generated; the synodal tyrant has others deliberate and remains above them, an arbiter and never the accused. It is the dissolution of the pope’s personal responsibility – exactly what synodality sets out to achieve – and whoever never makes decisions can never be contradicted. The pope who does not decide is the pope who decided to let others act, and who found a way not to be held accountable by anyone.

LSN: You intervened publicly in the case of Eleuterio Vásquez González, known as Lute, the Peruvian priest accused of serious abuse of girls in the Diocese of Chiclayo. When Leo XIV was bishop of that diocese, the canonical investigation was described by an ecclesiastical delegate as “a farce”; yet today the Pope has as his personal secretary Edgard Rimaycuna, a priest who was raised precisely within Lute’s pastoral and vocational circle.

Another prominent prelate, the Venezuelan Edgar Peña Parra – formerly Substitute for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State and now Apostolic Nuncio to Italy and San Marino – was reported by you in 2002 over extremely serious allegations, ranging from the abuse of underage seminarians to alleged links to violent deaths, allegations that were then systematically ignored by Bergoglio.

In light of these and other cases, do you believe that under Bergoglio a genuine “network” of reciprocal protection among men of power has become consolidated in the Church, in which omissions and responsibilities are covered up in order to preserve internal balances? And, if so, how extensive is this phenomenon at the highest levels of the Holy See?

Viganò: The Lute case reproduces with astonishing precision the modus operandi of other extremely serious cases, from McCarrick to Rupnik: victims who report and are not heard; an investigation conducted in such a way as to find nothing; the dicastery that closes the case by invoking the statute of limitations; the accused who not only remains unpunished, but is actually protected.

Alongside this, the necessary reverse side: whoever exposes the crimes and defends the victims is destroyed. Bishop Ricardo Coronado, the canon lawyer who had taken up the defense of the three young women, had his ecclesiastical forensic authorization revoked by the Peruvian Episcopal Conference in August 2024, and four months later was dismissed from the clerical state by a decree that – please note – did not bear Bergoglio’s handwritten signature.

Whoever accuses loses the priesthood; whoever is accused keeps everything. There is nothing to interpret here: the bishop of Chiclayo who conducted that investigation, described as “a farce” by those who knew the details closely, now sits on the Chair of Peter, and he has chosen beside him, as his personal secretary, a priest formed within Fr. Lute’s circle. These are not biographical details or unfortunate coincidences: they are proof that in this system, proximity to certain circles is not an obstacle to a career, but in fact the very condition for having one.

Also, observe a coincidence that is no coincidence. The same Msgr. Jordi Bertomeu who offered coca leaves to Pachamama in Cusco is the man who, in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, inaugurated – and justified in principle – that interpretation of canon law whereby ordinary procedures, with the safeguards they guarantee to the accused, are replaced by parallel structures and extraordinary commissarial powers. It is the juridical doctrine that makes the fate of Bp. Coronado possible: wherever procedure gives way to the will of the commissioner, whoever causes trouble is lost from the outset, and is not even left with the right to defend himself. Before being dismissed from the clerical state, Coronado was accused of infamous acts without a shred of evidence.

This is not an isolated case. When a Peruvian priest, Father Omar Sánchez, publicly criticized Bertomeu’s handling of matters, 22 days later an allegation of abuse against him appeared in the press – an allegation that the supposed complainant subsequently publicly denied, declaring that he had never filed any complaint.

Whoever raises his voice against the system discovers that he has a file already opened against him. And the man who places coca leaves before Pachamama is the same man who strips the priesthood from the man who defended the three young victims of Fr. Lute in Chiclayo. This gives us the measure of what the Holy Office has now become.

As for Peña Parra, allow me a clarification that I consider important. I dealt with his case much earlier, when I was Delegate for Pontifical Representations at the Secretariat of State. The allegations – his seduction of two underage seminarians in Maracaibo in September 1990, and his connection with the circumstances surrounding two violent deaths in August 1992 – had been transmitted to the Secretariat of State in 2002 by the Apostolic Nuncio to Venezuela, Archbishop André Dupuy. But this did not prevent Peña Parra’s career from advancing. And I will add a detail that says much about the role of the media: I spoke about that case in a lengthy interview with the Washington Post, and it was precisely the part concerning the Venezuelan abuser that never saw the light of day. Bergoglio wanted him as Substitute; and Prevost has now sent him as nuncio to Italy.

Yes, a network exists. I do not say this as a conjecture. I know it to be true from direct experience of decades in the Roman Curia and in nunciatures. It is founded on a simple principle: whoever can be blackmailed can be controlled by whoever holds the blackmail material. Moral corruption is not an accident of the system: it is the glue that holds the entire system together. That is why the guilty party or accomplice is promoted, while the person who reports him is isolated and struck down.

How extensive is this network of corruption? You need only to see how many among McCarrick’s “progeny” still occupy positions of authority in the United States and in the Vatican; how many of the cardinals created by Bergoglio were chosen precisely for their corruption and susceptibility to blackmail; and how many, in the Secretariat of State and in the dicasteries, owe their position not to doctrine or holiness, but to membership in a faction. The answer lies in the facts, and the facts speak for themselves.

READ: Pope Leo names bishop who addressed integrating homosexuality with religious vocation

LSN: Who benefits from this mechanism? Was Bergoglio its architect, or did he become entangled in it against his will?

Viganò: Neither one nor the other, in the terms in which the question is posed. Bergoglio was not a victim of a system, but neither was he its inventor: he was its beneficiary and then its guarantor. He was elected thanks to the Mafia of Saint Gallen, that is, thanks to a network that spent years planning its own seizure of power, and that found in him the right man because he was unscrupulous, devoid of doctrinal scruples, and extraordinarily skilled in the use of power – qualities refined through a long Jesuit formation whose method he retained throughout his life: ostensible obedience united with subterranean maneuvering, outwardly proclaimed poverty while simultaneously wielding absolute command.

Once elected, he did what every illegitimate power does: he surrounded himself with men who could not betray him because he knew their corruption and crimes, and he removed those who, being in no way blackmailable, could not be controlled. It is no coincidence that his closest collaborators – from Zanchetta to Peña Parra – are figures burdened by extremely serious allegations, which he systematically covered up and promoted.

Above all, the case of Marko Rupnik, S.J., is no coincidence: expelled from the Society of Jesus, already excommunicated for absolving an accomplice, and nevertheless protected for years, along with the entire faction that owes its position to that protection – beginning with the then-Cardinal Vicar Angelo De Donatis, whose transfer from the Vicariate of Rome to the Apostolic Penitentiary took place precisely in the wake of that case. That was not at all a promotion, as people wanted to make it appear, but a way of shielding him, removing him from the questions he would no longer have been able to evade in Rome.

Who benefits? Internally, it benefits a clerical caste that made the Church its private property and that needs impunity in order to survive. Externally, it benefits those financial, political, and supranational powers – that is, globalists – who have an interest in keeping the Catholic Church under blackmail, because a blackmailed Church does not speak, condemn, or evangelize: it collaborates. The link between deep church and deep state is not a theory: it is the reason why the Holy See docilely supported every globalist agenda – from climate to migration, from the pandemic to universal fraternity, from vaccine advocacy to pan-sexualism – and why it has signed and stubbornly renewed the secret agreement with Communist China, handing over faithful bishops and the underground Church to their persecutors, while remaining silent about everything that the Gospel ought to require it to proclaim loudly.

Moral corruption and doctrinal corruption are two sides of the same coin. Whoever betrays the faith also betrays morality, and whoever is blackmailable on morality is willing to betray the faith – even to the point of idolatry, as the coca leaves placed at Cusco by an official of the former Holy Office demonstrate to anyone who has eyes to see.

LSN: While the 2025 Papal Conclave was underway, a high-ranking Masonic authority told me confidentially during an investigation I was conducting: “You will see that they will elect Francis’s useful idiot.” When I asked for an explanation, this Freemason contact – who was, in fact, very close to the circles of the Roman Curia – told me that Francis appointed cardinals “with skeletons in their closets” from the peripheries of the world, with the request that they elect “his man” and preserve his “synodal legacy.” When Prevost was elected, this same Freemason told me sarcastically: “Habemus Papam! They elected him.” At first I was very cautious, and even hopeful about Prevost. Now that one year and several months have passed, I wonder how far this Masonic authority’s interpretation was from reality… What do you think?

Viganò: I cannot confirm words that I did not hear, nor am I interested in giving credence to the boasts of circles that have always enjoyed attributing to themselves credit for governing the Church. But I can say that this reading coincides exactly with what the facts make evident to anyone willing to look at them.

Bergoglio created the overwhelming majority of the College of Cardinals, choosing men whom no one knew, with very poor formation, coming from irrelevant sees, whose only qualification was personal loyalty to Bergoglio and, almost always, a vulnerability that made them controllable. A conclave composed in this way could only elect a man like Prevost, that is, a man who would guarantee the continuity of Bergoglio’s “synodal legacy.”

Freemasonry takes pleasure in this election, and this is not surprising at all: it also rejoiced at the election of John XXIII. For three centuries now it has pursued a single design, namely to demolish the Catholic Church: first by emptying her of her supernatural dimension and reducing her to a philanthropic organization, then by subverting her from within, and finally by transforming her into the anti-church, that is, into the Universal Religion of Humanity, which is its true goal.

Synodality, as a permanent revolution and the quintessence of all the demands of modernism, is the closest thing to that project ever accomplished from within. There is no need to imagine conspiracies: it is enough to read the Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, which describes a century and a half in advance a pope formed in the ideas of the revolution, elected by cardinals formed in the same ideas.

If a Masonic authority rejoiced at Prevost’s election, it is because what was being sought was achieved. The regret belongs to those cardinals and faithful who, for a few months, wanted to delude themselves. The expression “useful idiot” is offensive, and I would not make it my own; but I fear that whoever used it knows well the nature of the usefulness expected from the man they elected.