In recent months, Francis and the Vatican have been cracking down on the Vatican’s most outspoken critics. Firebrand Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, was ousted from his diocese last year after an investigation of his statements criticizing the pope. Strickland’s ouster has not diminished his standing as the de facto leader of the conservative faction in the church.
Cardinal Raymond Burke, another American conservative, was stripped of his pension and forced to leave his Vatican apartment around the same time.
Asked to comment on Viganò’s statement, the second most powerful prelate at the Vatican, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, told reporters that the archbishop must answer for his public attitudes and actions.
“I am very sorry because I always appreciated him as a great worker, very faithful to the Holy See, someone who was, in a certain sense, also an example. When he was apostolic nuncio he did good work,” he told Vatican journalists on Thursday.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said.
This article originally appeared here.
 that he had been summoned to the Vatican to answer charges of having committed the crime of schism.){kind=link}