Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options

Federico Lombardi, S.J., director of the Vatican Press Office, criticized as “partisan...partial and banal” an Italian television news program that on Jan. 25 broadcast portions of letters addressed to Pope Benedict and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state. The letters were apparently signed by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, right, and written when he was the secretary general of the commission that governs Vatican City. One of the letters, dated April 4, 2011, said that when Archbishop Viganò took office almost two years earlier, he discovered “chaotic management” and overspending. The letter complained of a “media campaign” by opponents of his efforts at reform and implored the pope not to remove him from his job “even for promotion.” The pope named Archbishop Viganò nuncio to the United States in October 2011. Under his leadership a Vatican City budget deficit of nearly $9.8 million in 2009 turned into a surplus of $28 million in 2010.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez was one of several community leaders who joined to open the Family Assistance Program, aiding those affected by recent ICE raids.
On Friday, Pope Leo XIV issued a statement on the theme "Migrants, missionaries of hope."
In Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” an ordinary electrician has a transcendent encounter—with U.F.O.s, not God.
John DoughertyJuly 25, 2025
A pair of hands opening a thick paperpack book. (iStock/LeoPatrizi)
Many of my acquaintances have given up “reading about something that didn't happen.” But fiction has long-term and concrete value, both mentally and socially.
Cam HealyJuly 25, 2025