Archbishop Viganò Condemns Pope’s Decision to Remove Conservative Catholic Bishop Strickland

The Vatican announced Saturday that Pope Francis has ordered the removal of Bishop Joseph Strickland from “the pastoral governance” of the diocese of Tyler, Texas. The Vatican announcement did not give any reason for Strickland’s removal. Strickland, a conservative, has upheld traditional Catholic teachings on abortion and homosexuality and has also warned that Pope Francis is “undermining the Deposit of Faith.”

After the announcement, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who served as the apostolic nuncio to the United States, condemned the pope’s action, stating on X:

The removal of His Excellency Archbishop Joseph Strickland, especially after the failure to ambush him with the Apostolic Visitation, appears as a cowardly form of authoritarianism, which in no way fits with Bergoglio’s [Pope Francis’] rants about “welcoming” and “inclusiveness.”

Seeing the sacrilegious and perverted Marco Rupnik incardinated in the Diocese of Capodistria, or Bishop Michael Olson still in office despite the petition of the faithful of Fort Worth following his abuses and scandalous behavior with the Carmelite Sisters of Arlington, while one of the few faithful Bishops is persecuted and kicked out for no reason shows us in all its arrogance the tyranny of the Argentine Jesuit.

A tyranny that is even more scandalous to the faithful due to the fact that the majority of the Pastors are silent out of cowardice or complicity.

Archbishop Viganò has warned in the past that a global coup threatens both the church and society, and he has called this coup inside the Catholic Church the “Deep Church.” (See, for example, The New American articles here and here.)