 Hi everybody, so welcome to our inaugural podcast here and I'm Paul Kenyore and I'm doing this for Tan Books and this is going to be the first hopefully in many of these and we're going to kick this off with a discussion with Bob Moynihan, Dr. Robert Moynihan, who is the founding editor, the founder of Inside the Vatican, which is a wonderful publication. He puts out his Moynihan letters, in fact I want to ask him just a little bit, talk a little bit about himself even before we get started on this and the subject is going to be his new book through Tan Books, Finding Vigano on Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. It's a fascinating book and I think it's something that every book of course is a subject for discussion and different points to raise and talk about, but I think this one even more so. There's a lot of really intriguing elements of this to a story that's very much ongoing. So Bob, welcome and thank you for joining us. Paul, thank you for having me. Pleasure to talk with you. Yeah and before we get going, I want to talk a little bit about yourself and where you came from and what you do, but we got to start this by acknowledging that the editor for this book, like all the recent books put out by Tan, my recent book put out by Tan on Karl Marx was John Morehouse and John died tragically. I still can't believe I'm even saying that in early December, I think December 5th, December 5th, December 6th, 2020. He was only 51 years old and a father of five children, his wife Robin and his oldest son, I think a freshman in college, all the other kids younger than that. And this was just a complete shock. I got a call that Sunday, the Sunday after it happened, it happened on a Saturday from Connor Gallagher at Tan Book. So I had never talked to you before. We had only emailed and I had a text message from him saying, please call me. And I thought, well, what's this about? And then he did it again, second time later in the day. I usually don't even check anything on Sunday. I try not to. And I said, this must be important. I better call. And I called and he said, he said, Paul, he said, I've got bad news. Our beloved friend, colleague and father. And I thought, oh no, what's he gonna say? And then he said, John Morehouse passed away and I just couldn't believe it. And he died shockingly, completely unexpectedly of a massive heart attack on December 5th. So I know that you, like me, were shocked by this. And I can tell listeners, people watching right now that he was really excited about this book. This was something that he was talking to me about that I had just finished actually that Sunday. I just finished getting through it and was preparing to write a review on it. But if you could say something about John, his role in this and his vision for this book. John Morehouse was a great man. He was a wonderful father. He was a man of faith for writers. He was an editor among editors. I think you would agree with that. He accompanied writers when they were going a little bit slow. He would encourage them when they were getting a bit too hasty. He would also encourage them to be careful. He was absolutely supportive. He was like a father to his writers or a brother. And so when he died, I think it was the fourth, the night of the fourth of December, Saturday. I also heard about it the next day. And I was devastated because we actually were planning to do three more books already under a contract. And he had helped me enormously to put this book together out of a massive material that spread across the whole recent history of the church and both scandals in the church, but also theological doctrinal conflicts and conclaves and interest groups. We jointly decided to focus on the person of Archbishop Vigano in one book rather than write 2,000 pages about the last 20 years of church history. And that decision, I think, was a good one. But I owe the publication of this book to his steady presence and his departure is devastating for me. I hope that my difficulty in finally bringing this all together. And I think we did. I think it's a good book. But I hope that stress didn't contribute to his physical weakness. I was astonished because he was a strong guy, big, powerful guy. He played football, I believe. I think he played college football, didn't he? Actually, I don't know. But yeah, yeah. Not D1, but I think maybe D3. Yeah, I had never actually met him in person. But still, I didn't know that he was having any health problems. You're right, too, about brotherly, fatherly. He was a kind guy, general guy. As you say this, I'm thinking, he locked me into a two-book contract, too. He wasn't going to let us get away, Bob. He was doing a great job in bringing new writers to TAN books and doing his best to improve the line of offerings and putting it right up there with some of the other Ignatius Press. Sophia Institute Press is doing nice work. And he was, I think, really improving the product line. He got me involved first by having me write a couple of forwards for Anthony Esselen's book on boyhood. Tom Crogwell, who also tragically died not that long ago, and then really pushed me to get a book contract. And so we did The Devil and Carl Marx, and now I'm in their contract. In fact, this podcast is because of John Morehouse. I mean, he arranged to do this. So yeah, it's just a shock. It's really a tragedy. Well, his wife and daughter heard something and came to his room. He said to them, I'm going to go to bed early tonight. He went to bed about 9.30. And at about 10 o'clock, they heard something and rushed to the room. And he was in extremis. And the daughter took off her scapular and placed it around his neck. And wife Robin had put up with the life of an editor. She had, she had read through my book and had liked it. So the whole family was, I felt close. They had brought their son down to Christendom College in the end of August. And then he died in early December. So for about a year and a half, I must have spoken with him on average at least once a week. How are you doing? He was so one alongside me, I would say, well, now the Archbishop wants to send emails to me. He said, no, you should go meet him if he would agree. Archbishop, I really have to come see you. It's the only way. And he said, let me think it over. And he said, okay. Wow. I'll give you my secret location. And then I called John. I said, John, he's going to see me. I'm going to go find him. And I said, he said, well, we could call the book Finding Vigano. It's a brilliant title. As soon as I got the book, I emailed both you and John and said, the title's brilliant. It really is. It just, it absolutely nails it. And I should say for people watching, there is a GoFundMe page for the family of John Morehouse. And so if you have any cash, anything you could spare or not spare, just please send them some money, help out the family. The, so it was, well, this is interesting, Bob. So it was John who said, hey, go find him. Go meet with him. Is that right? Yeah, I wanted to as well. But he encouraged me every step of the way. And all of the polemics here were also a part of our discussion. And they are pretty important right now in our church. Now, 10 books rightly is known and respected for the great traditional works that it brings out. Yes. Things that are out of print that are wonderful, but you can't find them and they print them. So these new books are an attempt, as you said, for them to become incisive in the questions of the day. And it's a delicate task because traditional books going into the deep questions are timeless. And if we write something about the question of the day, we have to give that some element of the eternal, some element that is timeless, or else we would disrupt even the, the, the greatness of 10 books itself. And so the great questions of atheist communism, which you dealt with in the devil and car marks and with the archbishop, I think, and I tried to deal with the great questions of the supreme law, the church being the salvation of souls to the point where if souls are being damaged or harmed, you have to even speak out, even if you've made a promise to keep something private. And that's vegan. Yeah. Vegan was in the crossroads of a moral dilemma, which is the moral dilemma in some ways of our, of our church today and our leadership. And the faithful are anxious for clarity and, and, and truth telling and repentance in order to put this behind. But there's a strong institutional sense, which does have certain basis. In fact, I mean, one problem is that there are false accusations. Yes. And we can never underestimate the harm that listening to a false accusation may cause to a falsely accused priest, for example, this is the soul damaging charge, career damaging, life damaging. But on the other hand, to have any sort of culture of cover up, which uses the idea that the church would cause scandal if it tells the truth in such a way that other young people or weak people or innocent people would be harmed. This is the wrong track for the church to take. And we have to, we have to say that. And, and you, and you quote him here. Well, first of all, you, you open the book with a number of great quotes and one from Pope Benedict the 16th quote, the greatest persecution of the church doesn't come from enemies on the outside. Right. And another from St. Maximus, the confessor, which really goes to what vegano says quote, when you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, let him who reads understand man's mind is a holy place in a temple of God in which the demons have laid waste the soul through passionate thoughts and set up the idol of sin. Some say that these things will also happen when the anti Christ comes. And when you read this book, you'll see how much that quote really fits with with vegano. And you say at the very end of the preface before starting the book in chapter one, here you quote vegano, I am just trying to follow my conscience. I am in daily prayer, prayer to our Lord, prayer to our lady asking for light, and I am making a step forward when I can. Everyone has his own responsibility. I am simply trying to do what my conscience tells me I must do now. In this situation each day, there is no larger plan. There is only praying and asking the Holy Spirit for guidance, step by step, day by day. And you may clear that, I mean, this isn't a man who, contrary to what some people say, has some sort of axe to grind, is bitter about not being appointed cardinal or whatever, right? He's following his conscience. He's doing what he believes is right. Yes, absolutely. Yes, this is our situation. So start from the beginning here, of all things. So tell us, you already knew him. You knew him at one point. When did you meet him? When did you first come in contact with him? It was a number of years ago. I think it was 2012. And possibly it was early 2013. It was in the Nuncieiture in Washington. He came here in October of 2012, early in November. He was Papal Nuncio. Yes, the Vatican is a global church and it has relations with states around the world because it's also a country. So its ambassadors deal with church issues in each country and report back to Rome about bishops, religious houses and religious orders, education, whether there's some trends in education that should be followed closely. And that's the religious side, whether the government may make some laws that will affect the church and taxation, etc., or doctrines of the church that the government may oppose. Then they also deal with the government itself because there are things that cross over into that area. And so they deal with some political matters, some economic matters, and report back trends in those areas to the Vatican. So a lot of people say that the Vatican Diplomatic Service is the most competent, well-trained in the world. It has centuries of experience and that the Vatican Diplomats know at a minimum five languages. They are trained for many years. Then they are moved from country to country, starting with small countries where they're second or third. Then they're second and then they're moved up to first in a small country. Then they're moved up to third or second in a major country and then there'll be Nuncios in the major countries, which would be France, England, the United States. So Vigano was picked in the early 1970s as a promising young priest when he was still in his 20s. He was from an old Italian Catholic family and he was representative of that Catholic Italy, to which we owe so much, so many wonderful people who've given their lives, both men and women. That'd be Northern Italy, the Milan area, right? Absolutely. And by the way, this is the first chapter, so my mother's 100% Italian, so probably no one would know the name Kengor, I'd be half Italian, right? I didn't get the cool Italian name, I got my dad's name, but reading that chapter and its page is 12 to 16, it's just wonderful. I mean, you kind of long for this, in many ways, idyllic Italy that he was raised in in the 1940s, 1950s. After I read that section, I read it to my kids and I said, you know, this reminds me of my grandmother and my grandfather, they were from Regio Calabria, which is down at the boot across from Sicily. And I said, this is what the old Italy was like. And you could tell that the Vigano just misses that. But anyway, so yeah, he, so he came up through Milan, correct? Yes. And he was first trained in law and then he went into religious life, became a priest in his mid-20s. And then he studied a year or two in Rome, then was made a parish priest in Pavia. Then he was noticed as so articulate. And a key thing to remember about this man is that he's precise. He's a man in some ways of the desk. So he will take three or four documents and synthesize them on one page. This is the information. I see that. And he's a kind of almost, in a sense, an accountant of issues and affairs, which then he proposes to his superiors during most of his career. But on a very high level, very clear, very precise, his father was a businessman, made his money, making metal, fabricating metal parts that he sold all over Europe. And Vigano is trained in the Vatican Diplomatic School. And then he's sent to Iraq. Yeah, right. And he learns a little bit of Arabic and he, he's given certain assignments by his, he's not the Nuncio, he's down below. And the Nuncio says, you're going to have to go to Damascus and pick something up. You have to drive the car across the desert all night. So Vigano. Fascinating. I mean, that's, I teach Middle East politics and that period in the 60s and 70s when Saddam Hussein was first coming into power. I mean, the idea of just getting in your car and driving by yourself 12 to 15 hours, and who knows what kind of car, across the Iraqi desert, right? And driving that, that's hazardous, but easy to do. But how many languages does the man speak? It's at least five. Five. He has an excellent command, obviously, of English and Italian and Latin too. So at least five, right. Yes, French, Spanish, Portuguese. And then I think a bit of Arabic and perhaps some German and Polish. So it is true that once you learn a second, the third and fourth are a bit easier. And our problem is we tend only to remain focused on the English. This has been the problem of the Americans with English as a global language. By the way, I got to cut you off there. What do you call somebody who speaks two languages, bilingual? What do you call somebody who speaks three languages, tri-lingual? What do you call someone who speaks one language, an American? All right. So Vigano continues. In the middle 70s, he's assigned because someone is called back from the Nuncetur in England, in London, to Rome, and he has to replace that person unexpectedly. So he goes to England for a year or two from about 76 to 78. And then he is called back to Rome just in time to watch the last days of Paul VI. And he's in the Secretary of State as a desk officer receiving reports from the Nuncios from around the world. So each day he goes into the Vatican and he stays there for 11 years till 89. And each day he goes into the Vatican and he told me every morning at seven, I would walk into St. Petersburg and celebrate Mass at the chapel of our Lady Mother of the Church, Mater Ecclesia. And one funny thing that repeatedly occurred is I had gone to that chapel in recent years. The last 10 years, I bring little groups of pilgrims to Rome and I always say, this is a key chapel, the chapel of Mother of the Church. We should say a prayer here. This is the one image in the whole Basilica of St. Peter's, which is a painting, not a mosaic. So year by year, I had gone there four times a year with a group saying this is a key chapel. And I meet Bigano. He says, all of my years in Rome, every morning at seven, I was at that chapel. Wow. Wow. That seems a coincidence. He said, no, not a coincidence. But John Paul II said, for the believer, there is no such thing. The believer calls a coincidence providence, right? Okay. Yes. And I see that's a key right there. When I said that and a couple of similar things to the Archbishop, he started to believe we had a connection that was friendly, but also maybe providential. Yeah. Yeah. So he was made bishop by John Paul II. I did not know this. This shows your knowledge of Church history. Of course, your training, your background, your academic background, he was made bishop of, is it Alpiana? Is that this is fascinating that Church still has bishoprics of areas that in some sense no longer exist, at least in the modern temporal world, right? Can you explain that? Yes. Well, they know they've got certain people worthy of Episcopal dignity, and they can't put them in Florence or New York because we've already got archbishops. So they keep a number of bishoprics in empty cities or cities that have been taken over where the Church is gone now, and they call titular seas. Right. There's a discussion about how wise this is or whether it's a good thing to do. But Alpiana is in Kosovo and once was a flourishing parish in a kind of triple cultural context of orthodoxy from the Serbian side, Catholicism from the Croatian side, and Islam from the Turkish side in the Albanian. And Alpiana no longer exists as a diocese because the Catholic presence receded the remained orthodox and Islamic presence. Well, you know, it was the it was the battle of Kosovo field, June 28, 1389, where the Ottoman Turks, the Muslims came into Europe and defeated the Serbs. That was their entrance into Europe. And that's what transformed Europe. In fact, the Serbs have a 600 year guilt complex that Slobodan Milosevic stood there in Kosovo field June 28, 1989, saying we will seek vengeance for what happened here at Kosovo field. But but just because invaders come in and remove a city or a name or region or whatever, doesn't mean that the church can't stand firm and say, hey, we will remain having a bishop of Alpiana. I love that. I think that's great. I think it's powerful in many ways that that would be the what he's the titular head of would be, you know, as a titular head of so he was made that by John Paul II in 1992. Yes. Yes. And is so 78 to 89 in the curia in the secretariat estate. And as a young man in his 40s, then so he was born in 1941. So 81 he turned 40. He's in the height of his learning parabola. And he watched the election of John Paul the first and his death. And then the election of John Paul and the entire issue that you've spent so much time, the photograph behind you is John Paul with Reagan. And that whole 1980s involved this colossal confrontation between an atheistic regime with a with a universal vision of taking the world over and the Catholic Church trying to continue to have religious belief and faith and the range of options, whether you compromise so you can get a little space or you're intransigent because that little space really won't be worth that much won't be worth your compromise. That's the question of dealing with dictatorships. And that and that's really his crucible. That's the formative battle. That's the formative battle. Yeah. Yeah. He was. And then you go through that period that to use an American phraseology here, George W. Bush referred to the 90s as as as years of sabbatical a decade of sabbatical as he put it between the shipwreck of communism and the day of fire, right, September 11, 2000. And so Vigano kind of goes through all of that and then comes to America, right, in the first decade of the 2000s. Well, I could just fill the gap in and say the 80s is the battle with the Soviet regime. Gorbachev signs the dissolution on Christmas of 1991. Right. But the 90s aren't just a sabbatical. The Pope starts to turn his attention to the so-called culture of death. Yes. It says, you know, the West now without a communist antagonist ought to be a free country and develop its spiritual dignity and the conception of defending human life and the family, etc. But it's not doing that. It's embracing pleasure. It's embracing abortion and we can't have a culture that embraces death in that way. It will end up darkening all aspects of our lives. And that's the second crucible for Vigano and the family, right? The family, the family, the Marble and the Jews, yes. And he was in Nigeria in some of those years in the 90s. He left the curia, went to Nigeria, had another posting there, was very influential in building seminaries and supporting new churches as the growth of the church in Africa has been surprising, strong, during recent decades. Really hopeful. Yeah. And then he's invited 98. John Paul invites him back to Rome in his second long period from 98 to 2011. It's another 13 years where he becomes, I would say, about the fifth or sixth most important man in the Vatican. Wow. But he's still not a decision maker. And he's a very faithful servant of his superiors. As I said, taking the information he receives and bringing it usually to the secretary of state who then transmits it to the Pope. And very respected. Yes. And he started then to be looked upon as someone who might clean up some corruption in the government of Vatican City State. So he was the assistant to the governor of Vatican City State and he either was going to be normally the governor, which would have made him also a cardinal, or Pope Benedict was thinking of giving him control over Vatican finances. And he runs into some internal opposition enemies who encourage a plan to send him out of the Vatican to become Nuncio in America. They use the phrase promove a tour would amove a tour, let him be promoted so that he may be removed. Right. So it doesn't look bad, but in fact, didn't want him there. Look how providential this was because he's going to see, he sees the thriving church in Africa, but he really needs to be in the West and be in America. Peter Berger once said that the sociologist once said that America is the most religious country in the world next to Italy or next to India. And of all things, he gets to see the decline in America during that period and the culture of death. So again, whereas I don't know how he felt at the time that we thought it was an emotion or being kicked aside or dismissed, but I would think providentially this is exactly where in retrospect, it seems to me this is where God wanted him. He showed me a letter written in Benedict the 16th hand to him saying, I know that you have urged me to keep you by my side here in Rome, but I feel after much prayer that you will play a providential role in the United States if I send you there. Wow. That's giving me chills. I don't think you quote that in the book, do you? Is that letter quoted in the book? I don't remember. I'm not sure myself if John maybe edited it out for the next volume. Right, right. Yeah, that's your lead. That's your lead for the next volume. Wow. And let me pause and say right here that so people who are maybe on the more liberal side Catholics who now don't like the, you know, or want to dismiss him as like, you know, Trump's bishop or a right winger or somebody like that this is a respected man of character, dignity, you know, this is a good person, right? He doesn't come out of this isn't a political guy. I mean, of all, he just ends up here in America at that point. And well, I'll let you continue on. So he came here then in 2010, 2012? 2011. 2011. Okay. To 2016. Okay. So five years, would that be a typical? Yes. That's the typical tenure for Anuncio. Okay. And then after that is retirement. And that's under that's under Pope Francis, who came in in 2013. Yes. So all right. And okay, so tell us about that his relationship with Francis from 2013 2016. I mean, we're building up here to the letter, right, the testimony, right, the letter that he wrote in August 2018. Yes. But prior to that, what happens if anything prior to that? Well, essentially, what happens is that he is very faithful to Pope Francis. And he comes to him and says this is the situation. And Pope Francis will tell me very honestly, what, who is Cardinal McCarrick? And he said, McCarrick, look, there's a dossier here in the congregation for bishops this thick about how by his, by his passion and trickery, he has corrupted two generations of seminarians in Northern New Jersey, bringing them to his beach house. And by the way, what is this? What is this conversation? 23rd of June, 2013. Well, Francis is elected on the 13th of March. He's installed on the 19th of March. He's like three months later. Yeah, during April, during April, he goes and pays his bill, stays in the Doma Santa Marta. During May, he starts receiving sort of counsel from others about which direction to move his pontificate. During June, he summons all the nuncios of the world to come to Rome. They meet with him, I think it was the 19th. And the several key ones, he says, I want to have longer conversations because the general meeting doesn't allow a close interchange. The nuncios are mostly referring to lower officials who will then pass the information up to Francis. But with June 23rd, it was the Sunday. Okay. And he celebrates mass at Doma Santa Marta. And after the mass, the Pope says, come up to my room and we'll talk. For about 45 minutes. And he says, tell me about McCarrick. He asked, being an O, because McCarrick was a prominent figure. And also a kind of key figure for relations with the U.S. government. He was close to Obama and to Biden. He had already been back and forth to China on several occasions. Francis was, I'm sure, attempting to assess what he would do with McCarrick with sort of a large amount of his experience. And no one doubts that McCarrick is a hard worker. It was a widely rumored, and it says in the McCarrick report, he would get up at five in the morning, work till 11 at night. He also was gregarious. He was intelligent, cunning. And he was congenial. He would be able to make friends with people and encourage them to make gifts of money to the church. By the way, in my, this is just coming back to me right now. And in my first book on Ronald Reagan, on Reagan's faith, I remember this. So covering the Reagan funeral for the AP at the, not the National Presbyterian Church, but the National Church in Washington. And McCarrick did one of the readings. I think McCarrick did one of the new, I think he did the New Testament reading. It was a national cathedral. And I believe it was Reagan's favorite verse, the shining city on a hill verse. And I remember that was just a nice moment. I was like, oh, Cardinal McCarrick. Oh, how nice. And I should go back and look how I presented this in the book, but it was just positive. It was wholly positive, which this is coming to me now too. As you're saying this, he would definitely know Joe Biden. He would probably, that's a good question. How well he and Biden knew one another. I think quite well. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, raises the question about final fate of one's soul and whether one can repent publicly or whether Bigano has asked McCarrick, he said, please come clean. Because there's certainly also true McCarrick did a lot of work. And as you just expressed, spoke beautiful words on many occasions. But he also was always pushing this sort of more progressive line. And he was an influential figure. And he moved up from New Jersey from Medtogen to Newark. Then he was appointed Archbishop of Washington in the year 2000. John Paul to approve that appointment. Yeah. Yeah. Cardinal O'Connor of New York had said, look, it's wise or not to do that because there's a few rumors. We didn't have evidence. And this is of course, the issue all along here. What's the exact evidence? Who's making the claim? How reliable are they? Is it possible? It's just false. Invented. And this is before the scandals really broke, right? In the early 2000s. Well, that's precisely correct. The idea generally back in 99, 2000 was that these things couldn't really happen. And that the accusations often were invented by somebody who thought maybe they could, by making an accusation, get a settlement quickly, make some money. So, so in June 23, 2013, Pope Francis, the vegano, tell me about McCarrick, right? He's the one that asked the question. And vegano says there's a file on him this thick, correct? And allegations and testimonies. And that conversation becomes even more critical than when vegano writes his letter, his testimony in August, 2018, where he recounts that conversation that he had with, with Pope Francis. And he says that point that Francis was lying or not being forthright. What did he say in that? Oh, he didn't really say anything. Francis said, I don't remember that conversation. Okay. What he, what vegano's words mean is that he's alleging that Francis should have marginalized or even acted against McCarrick. Whereas in fact, even the very next day, McCarrick ran into vegano and said, hey, I just saw the Pope, just as vegano had. And the Pope has asked me to go to China. So, vegano is aware that he said something to the Pope, but the McCarrick is telling him he's still in good favor. So he's watching this during 2014, 15, 16. Then he retires and he watches it in 17 as the Vatican continues to support certain things and the nomination of certain bishops and the kind of trendiness of the progressive agenda. And he starts to wonder whether there's been a type of infiltration into the church hierarchy that not only is corrupt with regard to covering up abuse, but also is changing and altering church doctrine. So as he meditates on this, and he wonders, what can I say? Can I write something? Could I give an interview? We discussed it. In 2017, we talked for four or five hours one day. We said the church looks like it's a little bit in troubled waters here with many people betraying the traditional faith and saying it's okay. What can be done? And he said, I think you have to take case by case and write about it. Try to do that in your magazine. Yeah. So then another eight months passes or 12, 12 months. July, now June 20, 2018. McCarrick is alleged that an accusation emerges in the diocese of New York saying McCarrick abused or molested a person younger than age 18, a minor. Mostly had been allegations of 19, 22-year-old seminarians who said that he had approached them, molested them, propositioned them. And the church had not taken it so seriously because they were not minors. But this, both for Vigano and for myself, because we think a bishop who's a powerful bishop, who's dealing with seminarians, has them under his authority. So it's not an equal relationship of so-called mature adults of able to engage in whatever they want without considering it a crime. Right. And he's a celibate bishop. Well, obviously, that's not good. But so this June 20th revelation in New York immediately switches the gears even in Rome. And McCarrick voluntarily resigns from the cardinal in July. And that's validated by Rome saying, okay, you're no longer a cardinal. It will take until the winter before he's defraud. He's no longer a priest, Mr. McCarrick. July 2018. This June 20th, 18 was the allegation. I think February 19, he was de, he was laicized. So first he was- By Pope Francis. By Pope Francis. And Pope Francis' friends, supporters, say this shows Francis was reacting in the correct way to this case. That's their argument. Now, what then happened was August 10th, I think, the state's attorney of Pennsylvania issues a report saying 600 priests have been credibly accused over 40, 50 years by several thousand people. Josh Shapiro report. Yeah, I live in the state of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, he's my attorney general. But anyway. Well, the problem again is we don't know how much of this really is true. And some people have criticized that report as a kind of way to attack the church. Yeah, Josh Shapiro's framing of it, I wrote a number of things on this, was way over the top. However, obviously many of the accusations and bad things, and they're obviously true. So I'm not disregarding that. But anyway. But the main point, every media in America, from CNN through the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, day by day, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th of August, the church in America is corrupt. The priesthood is corrupt. And no one is doing anything. Bigano is watching all this and he finally says, now I'm going to answer this question. I'm going to give my testimony showing that we had many people who wished to end this type of abuse, but we also had sort of people who one reason or another, maybe some for the best of reasons, the worried that they were false accusations, but others because they were sympathetic to the people who were accused. They wanted to protect their careers. So there was a kind of clerical culture of cover up that Bigano denounced. He denounced and he gives the names of about 40 different people. That launches Bigano's name to the world, the whistleblower, the truth teller. That issue that came out the night of August 25th, 2018. And John Morehouse and I were already talking that winter. How can we get, because Bigano then drops off the face of the earth. Although he continues to be in touch a bit with email and I still had his email, but no one knows where he is. So the view was that he went into hiding. Yeah, he did go. He did. He did. And he was, some felt that he was hiding from recriminations by the church. And right, there was even some thought that he could possibly be in in danger, physical danger, but I think as you say in the book, he doesn't believe that that's the case, right? Yeah, this is a delicate question. I don't want to be over the top. Right. You deal with it very, very fairly and not in a sensational way at all. Go ahead. But nevertheless, he's the archbishop in hiding. Yes, right. Nobody knows. I know where he is, but nobody else does. And whether it's a self-imposed hiding or whether that's merited or not, but you had a couple of friends who said the most prudent thing to do is to make yourself scarce. Yeah. You really think so? And they said, yeah. Which is now done for two full years, right? Two and a half years. Two and a half. Yeah, two and a half. And Pope Francis said that when asked about this criticism, now here's the real zinger, Vigano called on Pope Francis to resign, right? That was the passage at the end of the testimonies in which he said, because I also know that I told him about McCarrick, I regard him as participating in this culture of cover-up. And if he would like to be coherent with his own proclamations of a total transparent church, he ought to resign because he ought to accept that he was himself complicit. He later said maybe that was perhaps abridged too far with regard to the Supreme Pontiff. But still, he's not retracted it. He's just said, I could see that it's emotional and perhaps prudentially, potentially perhaps not the thing that I would say if I were writing it again. And that's the thing that even a lot of his advocates and friends and sympathizers in the Vatican said, well, when he said that, that was too much, right? He should not have called on the Pope to step down, right? And that's why, right on this point is why I wanted to go talk to him. I wanted to find Vigano. I wanted to know how he judged Pope Francis truly and whether he would retract or would not retract that judgment. What intensity of condemnation does he still have as he assesses this pontificate? And how does he assess the problem of destabilizing the Catholic Church with such critiques? And these are the things we discussed. But we went at such length and John Morehouse knew about these discussions and he said, don't put them in this book. Put them in a second book. And I think the pressure of this reflection was considerable. Even I, I've lost about 30 pounds in the past year as I've tried to understand the correct balance between fidelity to the successor of Peter and fidelity to the truth in which you, like a child says, the emperor has no clothes while all his courtiers say you're nicely dressed, oh king. We have a culture now around the Pope where his closest advisors say, you are wonderful, you're great, nothing you've done is a problem. But all around the church, there's a general sense in traditional and sort of conservative and sort of deeply Catholic circles that we've verged on making compromises with modernist progressive thought evidently for diplomatic reasons because we don't finally believe we can change the teaching. So there must be, we conclude that there must be diplomatic choices made to not fight against the trillionaires and the global media and the legal restrictions that might come against the church and that is the state of our present crisis right at that point. Well, and this, this question, this, this conflict between this tension between fidelity to the Pope and also speaking the truth when you feel that an injustice is out there for people who are watching and especially liberal Catholics. Dr. Moynihan, I'm telling you it deals with this really fairly. I mean, he's so careful not to take sides on this to go through this. Some of the most interesting parts of this book are the interludes where he goes through and takes a step back and tries to assess this based on church history, the teachings of the church. Now, now Pope Francis was asked about this, about vegano statement. And Bob, he initially said that I will not speak another word on this, right? I will not say a word on this. But then later in a homily, in referring to the great accuser, Satan, he seems to ask, right, that this that the great accuser here that he might be applying this to vegano. I'm being careful in how I say this, and I know that you too are careful with how you deal with it. Oh, that's correct. Most journalists, observers interpreted those words of the Pope to be a kind of punchback against vegano saying, look, you're no longer not just a Vatican Nuncio high ranking official insider who has denounced cover up. You've become the great accuser, a servant of Satan, who is now denouncing the successor of Peter and serving the interest of those who wish to weaken, divide the church. That's the wrong accusation. And for people who want to beat up on vegano, because of harsh criticisms against Francis, think about the harsh criticism that Francis has just made toward vegano. And by the way, having never actually sat down with vegano right after the accusation to sort of talk this out, right? I have desired perhaps foolishly to set up such a meeting. That's great. You should. God bless you. I mean, right? I mean, that would be the, that would be the, you know, I don't want to be judged. I make a judgmental statement toward the Pope, but you know, that would strike me. What's the verse in Matthew that my Protestant friends always cite? But, you know, when you have a problem with your Christian brother, right, bring it up with your Christian brother, meet with that person, talk to that person. You know, I mean, really, can you tell us Bob has, has Francis, to your knowledge, tried to reach out to vegano to meet with them? I mean, that would be the right thing to do. At the end of August, right after I had several days of meeting with vegano, I'm back in 2019 now. So now it's almost a year and a half ago. I had a meeting with Cardinal Parolin for over an hour. We went through the whole story. He said he was concerned that the Americans were becoming Cathars, that is purists, believing that they were ones who were free of sin and that others were damned because of their frailty. And he said, but everyone is frail. Everyone is a sinner. He said, this is what we in Roma concerned about, that you have almost a heretical mindset in the right, the traditional part of the church. I said, I said, I don't think that's the case. But I think there's a kind of Gnostic belief in the progressive circles around Pope Francis that's promoting this thought that they've got this secret knowledge that's understood the motivation of these conservatives. And they form that as a doctrine, but it's not the way they are. They're just mothers and fathers, parents of children, seeing how their children are becoming so confused in the media and internet culture of today so that young girls are thinking of amputating their breasts and trying to become women by the thousands. At least that's what I've heard. I wrote so many times in the margins of your book, I could tell the struggle that you're having that I've also had with just trying to figure out what the heck the truth is. And by the way, really touching part of the book is where you consult your father who you dedicate this book to. And your father gives this beautiful fatherly wisdom about just do your best to try to tell the truth. And honestly, you and I are both in the same position. I don't even know who to believe anymore half the time. It's really hard, right? Well, just within the last month or so in the end of 2020, I spoke with people very close to the Pope, some of his advisors, one one advisor, and said, let's set up a meeting so that we can work through this and avoid some type of schism, excommunication, denunciation. And he said only if he comes on his knees, begging forgiveness. So I, he said they're not on an equal level. One is the Holy Father and another is a renegade bishop. And I said, well, unless we do something very unusual and filled with generosity, Christian fellowship and hope, we are facing a situation that the enemies of the church will delight in where we can't reconcile people who say they all have the interest of the church at heart and defending the truth of the church and the charity of the church and the charity of Christ. And Pope Francis does say that all the time. So I think he's in the hands of some people who have encouraged him to reach out in a way that's confusing, right? Many, because they argue that it's helpful for the global Catholic reach of the church. And he's not hearing, or when he does hear criticisms of that, he's not hearing good reasons. Yeah. Yeah, it's, we're, we're running out of time, boy, this hour has flown. Wow. But I want to hit a couple of other things with you that I think are really crucial here. So when it comes to Pope Francis, Vigano does say that, and this is a quote in the book, right? He is destroying the church. So he actually used that phrase, right? Vigano believes that Francis is destroying the church. And, and he talked, there's another line in the book where he says something, and this might be in regard to the German bishops, but he says confusion, confusion, confusion, right? Confusion is just raining here under, under this Pope. Could you, so could you address that? Well, that does reflect his thought. Everyone recognizes that can arise in the church, certain structures which are related to a historical period. So cardinals can be like princes, medieval princes. And religious orders can sort of mimic certain guilds or brotherhoods or something like that. And even our architecture and our philosophy even can be more or less secularized or faithful to the gospel, more literal or more metaphorical. Throughout our whole history, we have navigated in this choppy water of the world, the bark of Peter going between the two extremes and checking its course so it doesn't shipwreck on the bank of a secular, de-spiritualized, de-sacralized view. Because the people that propose these things up to a certain point seem attractive. They say, we're going to help people more by reducing their, the communists said this. We're going to have real justice in this world and not wait for the next world. But, but human beings as the church has taught and as Christ taught have an eternal dimension. This is our uniqueness and our glory and our tragedy because we can, we can be, we can be damned. But the modern world has taken it a step further. They say we are no longer of such dignity that we are even able to be damned. Yeah. If I, if I could read this, this is from, this is from your book. This is a quote from Vigano saying of Pope Francis, quote, if he will not speak clearly, if he uses ambiguous language, if he leaves fundamental doctrines exposed to the opposed interpretation, if he's not correct, the pastors and the faithful are confused and they may follow paths contrary to the teaching or the tradition of the church that lead them to the scene of eternal death. The door of the sheepfold is open to all. No one is excluded, but it should remain well secured and protected when the sheep are exposed to the attack of the wild beast or the brigand. Yes, the shepherd must go in search of the lost one, but also must not in so doing expose the 99 to danger. And this is when he says here, Bob, Vigano says, through his behavior, speaking of Pope Francis, he is destroying the church. There is even talk of schism and much, much has been, much has been lost. And then you asked him, Bob, you said, what must be done? And Vigano replied, we have to continue to be clear in our minds, but we cannot continue to hide the facts. We must recognize that there is a project of the devil to destroy the church. The time will come when everything will be out in the open. For now, we must study and pray and prepare ourselves spiritually for what is to come. And maybe we could sum up with that. Tell me, I noticed this may be pretty apocalyptic, literally. What does he believe is to come? I mean, how, how bad is it? Where, what are we looking at in the next few years, possibly? Well, nobody knows the day or the hour. Those are Jesus words. Vigano was deeply moved and frightened by the closing of all the churches of Italy on the 12th of March. And I called him that day. This is eight months ago, nine months ago now. I said, what do you make of this? And he said, I've got to say nothing like this has ever occurred. The public sacrifice of the mass, the reenactment of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross has been prohibited throughout Italy. Now there were private masses, but publicly because of the virus, all churches were closed. So I said, well, he said, I can't say that this fulfills scripture, but there is that passage in Daniel which speaks of the ceasing of the sacrifice and that that being a sign of the end time. He said, but of course the end time could be extended. As I later talked with him, he did also say there's the Padama secret, which speaks of one great victory of our Lady, which would be followed by a time of peace. So I would say that predominates in his thought. He does have an undercurrent in his thought that these could be the book of Apocalypse, Unfolding and the sign of the beast, and apostasy at the high levels of the church, but fidelity by those who are with the elect. That's not Viginal, that's Revelation, John, and of course has to be interpreted because they're metaphors and images, but that's part of our tradition, a delicate part requiring interpretation and meditation. But certainly we've seen enough, and you've studied, the Soviets killed 30 million people or more. They put people baptizing their children into concentration gulags. The Nazis killed many, many people. We are now abording millions and millions of babies, so there is evil in this world. We must stand against it. And when we try to compromise with it, we often lose our own soul. So the martyrs said better not to compromise even if we must suffer martyrdom. And that's the Maximilian Colby courage, that death is not the final word. We can die before we die if we give up our faith. And this is actually Viginal's message. I think it is. I think it is. I think he does hope for a great victory of our Lady, as predicted or spoken of at Fatima, a time of peace, including also the conversion of Russia. And let me, that'd be a great spot to end, but I got to ask you one more thing. Are you a little concerned about Viginal right now speaking out too much and maybe going to sources that people don't trust or who are seen as very partisan, very ideological? I mean, frankly, I'm more comfortable with him talking to you because you're respected. But I do have a concern, and I know I've emailed the last few weeks with conservative Catholics. In fact, I sent my review of your book to one conservative Catholic editor who didn't want the review because he no longer trusts Viginal. And he even told me he thinks that Viginal is a mess. That's the phrase, that's the word that he used. So I think he does run a risk here if he keeps speaking out too much on the deep state on COVID-19, on Trump, on Biden, that he will be seen as just too political and his message won't be taken seriously. Is that a concern to you at all? It is a concern. I would say in scripture, it says, put not your faith in princes, and that means by metaphor, leaders, because they're men and they're fallible. And this would be the case with our political leadership from President Trump through, through Biden, through Clinton, Bush, et cetera. And even Reagan. And in the church, we tend to hope that the bishops and the shepherds of the church will re-center themselves on the gospel and not be distracted by red herrings in virus and vaccine and economic collapse reflections. However, we live in this world and we have to point out as best we can with the information and judgment we have, the dangers we see that could affect also the faith. I've encouraged him to always speak about the libertas ecclesiae, the freedom of the church. The church is another category in the world alongside the category of the civil state. And we've always defended that. And I think that his remarks about the virus, the lockdown, and the celebration of the liturgy. And remember, we've got a lot of people now in many places who cannot baptize children, who cannot make their first communion, who can never even go to confession, never attend mass, not even be buried in a funeral. We keep thinking this will come to an end, but this liturgical sacramental life of the church ceasing is interrupting sacramental life of the church. And I think that's been the main thrust of his thought, but I do agree that as you wrestle with the problems of this world, you could end up entering in a troubling way into explanations and theories and conclusions that are not just from the gospel. And so we have to be very careful and try to get to the truth, even of these matters. Well, I'll end with this because this is how you end the book. And I wrote in the margin, good way to end. And you end with this quote from Vigano, right? The spiritual desert is extended every day more, every day new souls are drying up because they are abandoning the faith. But if we preserve the faith, we will preserve the seed for a new harvest, a new springtime of faith for the world. And so you ended, you ended on that very positive note. And I would tell people that whether or not you like Vigano, dislike Vigano, if you really want to find Vigano, all right, and this is from a man who found him, not just physically, but in a deeper sense who really got to discover him. If you want to try to understand him and know where he's coming from, just as you'd want to try to understand Pope Francis and where he's coming from, what would you do for Pope Francis? Well, you'd buy any number of different biographies of Pope Francis. This is the only one on Vigano. And it could not be written by a better source by somebody literally more close to him, someone who got more close to him. And it's done with remarkable commendable objectivity. It's a fascinating book and you got to read it, people, you got to read it. And also if you can take this, if you like this discussion here, take this link, send it to people, send it to friends and you refer people to Tan Books, refer people to the Tan Books website to get a copy of this. You can also get it at Amazon. And Dr. Robert Moynihan, thank you very much. Thank you for this. It's been a fascinating discussion and I hope people will tune in and spread it around. Thank you so much. I would just say that John Morhouse passed away a month ago was my editor as he was your editor. Yes. Wonderful friend. He encouraged me to put that hopeful note at the end of the book. Oh, wow. Amen. Amen. Thank you for adding that. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you, everybody. God bless. Take care and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.