Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano (r), former apostolic nuncio to the United States, German Cardinal Walter Brandmuller stands next to during opening prayer at a conference on Blessed Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, “Humanae Vitae,” in Rome Oct. 28

A former apostolic nuncio to the United States has called on Pope Francis to resign over the developing scandal of clerical sex abuse that is casting a lengthening shadow over his visit to Ireland.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Holy See’s former ambassador in Washington, has accused Pope Francis of repealing sanctions imposed by his predecessor Benedict XVI on disgraced former Archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick.

Pope Francis last month accepted Cardinal McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals and directed the 88-year-old former Archbishop of Washington to observe “a life of prayer and penance in seclusion” until the end of the canonical process against him.

Although Archbishop Viganò says McCarrick had been placed under sanctions by Benedict XVI, Church observers point out that the former Archbishop of Washington continued with an active schedule of pastoral engagements following his retirement.

Archbishop Viganò was sent to Washington as papal ambassador to the United States in 2011. According to Vatileaks letters, Viganò was exiled to the US from an administrative post in the Vatican for whistleblowing on mismanagement of Holy See finances. He is an ally of the “dubia” cardinals, who have publicly challenged the Pope to correct his family life teaching. Earlier this year he attended a conference of Catholic critics of Francis in Rome where the keynote speaker, Cardinal Burke, set out times when a Pope should be “disobeyed.”

Viganò served in Washington until 2016 and towards the end of his tenure was at the centre of a fiasco involving the Pope meeting Kim Davis, a clerk from Kentucky who refused to perform same-sex marriages, during a visit to the United States.

In his 11-page open letter released in during the Pope’s visit to Ireland, as Francis prepares to celebrate Mass for half a million people in pouring rain, and published by the Veritas Vincit conservative blog, Viganò goes into substantial detail of what he knew about these sanctions, and subsequent events.

He makes numerous statements against many members of the hierarchy, including Pope Francis.

Some commentators pointed out on Twitter that Viganò is a long-time critic of Francis.

McCain was diagnosed in July 2017 with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.

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The longtime Arizona Republican senator, reared in the Episcopal Church, attended a Southern Baptist megachurch in his later years. He viewed himself as a Christian but had “a distrust of the religious right and a faith that is too public, too political,” author Stephen Mansfield, author of books about the faiths of presidents and presidential candidates, told Religion News Service in December 2017.

In a family memoir, a campaign ad as well as a televised interview with megachurch pastor Rick Warren, he recalled a guard in his prisoner of war camp in Vietnam who shared his faith one Christmas. “He’s a very spiritual per-son but… in his core, he’s a military man,” said Alexander, author of “Man of the People: The Maverick Life and Career of John McCain.” “They don’t feel comfortable talking about religion.” In his family memoir, “Faith of My Fathers,” he recounted how he “prayed more often and more fervently than I ever had as a free man.”

“He was a very good preacher, much to my surprise,” Day told RNS in 2008, when he was 83. “He could remember all of the liturgy from the Episcopal services … word for word.” Day died in 2013 and McCain spoke at his funeral.

On one Christmas in captivity, McCain recalled in the memoir, as “room chaplain” he was given a few minutes to copy passages from a Bible.

“It was more sacred to me than any service I had attended in the past, or any service I have attended since,” he wrote.

The Legio Maria Mass at Ephesus Church on an August Sunday morning featured Prophet Moses Otieno singing hymns and reciting the rosary before an altar adorned with pictures of Jesus, Mary and church founder Simeo-Ondeto and his mother, Maria.

Then Otieno began to speak in tongues and cast out demons as congregants wailed, spun and fell to the floor.

“I can see in the spirit women here are barren,” Otieno declared. “Rush to the altar and get a miracle. Today you are going to receive babies. I have been sent by the Messiah through visions to deliver barren women today.”

The Legio Maria movement (Latin for “Legion of Mary”) sprouted in western Kenya in the 1960s after Ondeto, his mother and other members were excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church for practicing exorcism.

Ondeto, who died in 1992, is now believed to be the Messiah. Specifically, Legio Maria adhe-rents believe Jesus and Ondeto are the same person who has appeared in different ages bearing a different skin colour.

The group is often mistaken as being Catholic because it celebrates the main elements of the traditional Latin Mass. It has nuns and its own Pope, Romanus Ong’ombe, who lives at church headquarters in Got Kwer, located in Migori County, in south-western Kenya.

Reports of miracles have attracted local Catholics. An estimated 90,000 nominal members left the Catholic Church to become the first cohort of believers.

A recent study by the University of California Santa Barbara has found that a Catholic education helps to improve students’ self-discipline. According to associate professor Michael Gottfried’s and doctoral student Jacob Kirksey’s findings, Catholic schools are better at instilling traits of self-discipline in their students than US public schools and other private schools.

Their study focused on answering two questions. One: Are children in Catholic elementary schools more self-disciplined than comparable students in other schools, as measured by their likelihood to engage in verbal and physical confrontations and control their tempers? And two: Is the relationship between Catholic school attendance and self-discipline stronger in certain subsets of students?

The study’s data set was drawn from two cohorts, comprising 15,000 – 17,000 kindergarteners who attended public schools and 1,000 – 2,000 who attended non-public schools, of which close to 50% attended a Catholic school.

“The most obvious feature that Catholic schools and similar faith-based schools have in common is their focus on religion including such specifically Judeo-Christian values as humility, obedience, kindness, tolerance, self-sacrifice and perseverance,” the authors added.

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said he was “eager for an audience” with Pope Francis to gain his support for the bishops’ plan to respond to the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

In an Aug. 27 statement, Cardinal Daniel N. Di Nardo of Galveston-Houston also said that the questions raised by Arch-bishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former nuncio to the United States, in a letter published by two Catholic media outlets “deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence.”

“Without those answers, innocent men may be tainted by false accusations and the guilty may be left to repeat the sins of the past,” the cardinal said.

A former official of the apostolic nunciature in Washington, DC, has corroborated a key portion of the explosive testimony from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. “Vigano said the truth,” Msgr. Jean-Francois Lantheau-me, who was first counsellor at the nunciature, told the Catholic News Agency. Specifically, he confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI had imposed sanctions on former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Pope Francis said Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s long docu-ment calling on him to resign is written in a way that people should be able to draw their own conclusions.

“I read the statement this morning and, sincerely, I must say this to you and anyone interested: Read that statement attentively and make your own judgment,” he told reporters Aug. 26. “I think the statement speaks for itself, and you have a sufficient journalistic ability to make a conclusion.”

Speaking to reporters trave-ling back to Rome with him from Dublin, the Pope said his lack of comment was “an act of faith” in people reading the document. “Maybe when a bit of time has passed, I’ll talk about it.”

The role of the media is important for getting the truth out, he said, but journalists should be careful to write about accusations “always with the presumption of innocence, not a presumption of guilt.”

During the inflight news conference, Pope Francis also was asked about Ireland’s legalization of gay marriage and what advice he would give the parent of a gay child.

“What would I say to a parent whose son or daughter had that tendency? I would say first, pray. Don’t condemn. Dialogue, un-derstand, make room for that son or daughter, make room so he can express himself,” the Pope said.