A Pope who wanted to purify the Church wouldn’t appoint McCarrick men

[Stone]

Archbishop Viganò: A Pope who wanted to purify the Church wouldn’t appoint McCarrick men
McCarrick brought Saporito into the priesthood; McCarrick promoted him; McCarrick’s heir, Tobin,

 consecrated him as a bishop and appointed him his Auxiliary Bishop in Newark.



Pope Leo XIV smiles to the audience as he arrives in the Popemobile ahead of the Inauguration Mass of Pope Leo XIV

 in St Peter's Square on May 18, 2025, in Vatican City
Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Sep 16, 2026
(Exsurge Domine) — Yesterday, on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington announced that Leo had appointed Michael A. Saporito, Auxiliary Bishop of Newark, as Bishop of Metuchen. The news takes up just a few lines in the Press Office Bulletin, and that is all it deserves if read as a routine administrative matter. But anyone familiar with the history of the Church in the United States — and I have known it at first hand for five years as Papal Representative — knows that an entire programme is laid out in those few lines.


The breeding ground

Metuchen is not just any diocese. It was the first episcopal see of Theodore McCarrick, who governed it from 1981 to 1986 before moving to Newark and from Newark to Washington, leaving behind a trail of abused seminarians, of compensation paid in silence, and of complaints shelved. It was precisely in Metuchen and Newark that the events I denounced in 2018 took place, and of which the Holy See had been aware since the pontificate of John Paul II.

RELATED: Pope Francis covered up McCarrick abuse, former US nuncio testifies

Now, Michael A. Saporito is being appointed to that post – a priest whom McCarrick ordained in 1992, whom McCarrick appointed in 1999 as deputy director of the vocations office – that is, mind you, the office responsible for selecting young men to enter the seminary, whilst ‘Uncle Ted’ (McCarrick) would invite them to his seaside home — and who, since 2020, by Bergoglio’s volition and through the hands of Cardinal Tobin, has worn the mitre. This is not merely a biographical detail: it is a matter of lineage. McCarrick brought Saporito into the priesthood; McCarrick promoted him; McCarrick’s heir, Tobin, consecrated him as a bishop and appointed him his Auxiliary Bishop in Newark. Today, Prevost is installing him in the See of Metuchen, which once belonged to McCarrick. Ex fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos. [Ed: By their fruits, you shall know them.]

I am not saying that Saporito is guilty of his mentor’s sins: I do not know, and that is not the point.

I am saying that a Pontiff who truly had the purification of the Church at heart — that purification which Bergoglio proclaimed in words but sabotaged in deeds — would never have chosen, for McCarrick’s diocese, a man trained in McCarrick’s school. On the contrary, such a choice would have been made by someone intent on ensuring the continuity of that network. And Prevost, who was Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and is familiar with every file, and who, moreover — being American, and from Chicago — has direct and long-standing knowledge of those circles, cannot claim ignorance.


The CV

But there is more, and the LifeSiteNews article documents it with the sobriety of the facts. As parish priest in Maplewood, Saporito founded a group for ‘homosexual Catholics’ — Open Arms — and entrusted the sacred music to a director who had publicly declared that he was in a relationship with a man. After his departure, that parish hosted ‘Pride Masses’ and ‘Rainbow Rosaries’, and no one has ever denied that the seed had been sown beforehand. Since 2023, Saporito has been attending the closed-door sessions organised by New Ways Ministry — an organization condemned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and disavowed by the American bishops for its dissent from Catholic morality — for bishops on LGBTQ and gender issues; and he requested that his name be published, declaring himself ‘enriched’ by those meetings.

A bishop describes himself as ‘enriched’ by the teachings of those who deny that the act of sodomy is an abomination that cries out to heaven for vengeance. Not ‘troubled’, not ‘saddened’, not ‘concerned for souls’: but enriched. This is the vocabulary of the synodal Church, in which error is not refuted but listened to; and those who listen to it do not come away admonished, but enriched. If a bishop can claim to be enriched by ‘New Ways Ministry’, what remains of his role as guardian of the flock? What will Saporito say to the young people of his diocese who, as he himself once did, are about to enter the seminary?

And the method is always the same: they ignore doctrine and, in practice, impose a subverted version of it. Leo does not explicitly abrogate the Catechism, but regards it as an outdated ideal, and allows what one dares not write in documents to be carried out in practice. This is why I say that Leo is Francis’s successor: Bergoglio has set processes in motion; Prevost institutionalizes them.


The system

Saporito’s appointment must be viewed alongside that, a few months ago, of another priest from the McCarrick faction as Archbishop of New Orleans, James F. Checchio (formerly rector of the North American College, then Bishop of Metuchen), and must be linked to the ‘Lute case’ (Father Eleuterio Vásquez) in Chiclayo; to Leo’s personal secretary, Edgard Iván Rimaycuna, who grew up in Father Lute’s circle; and to the Apostolic Nuncio to Italy, Edgard Peña Parra, against whom allegations have been levelled that I have been denouncing since 2002. The picture that emerges is one of striking consistency. In the conciliar-synodal Church, proximity to certain circles and the practice of certain vices are not an obstacle to career advancement: they are a prerequisite. Those with skeletons in the cupboard are vulnerable to blackmail; those vulnerable to blackmail are manipulable; those who can be controlled are promoted. Moral corruption and sodomy are the glue that binds it all together.

If the Pope truly wished to clean up the Church, he would have to open the archives, publish the names of those who knew and remained silent, condemn the guilty, compensate the victims, and appoint bishops from outside that lineage. The famous McCarrick Report of 2020, which was presented as an act of transparency, served instead to exonerate Bergoglio and his accomplices, and to target myself, who had exposed that vast network of corruption. It is no coincidence that I have been excommunicated and declared a schismatic, whilst ‘Uncle Ted’s nephews’ are being offered episcopal sees and prominent positions in the Curia.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

Viterbo, 16 September 2026

On the Feast of Saints Cornelius the Pope and Cyprian the Bishop, Martyrs, Wednesday of Quattuor Temporum in September

[1] https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaki...-metuchen/

This article, which first appeared on Exsurge Domine, was translated from the original Italian by DeepL Translate and checked by an Italian-speaking editor.