Denver, Colo., Jul 18, 2019 / 17:35 pm
A Church historian at Philadelphia's Villanova University has said three U.S. bishops are "devout schismatics" who try to diminish the authority of Pope Francis.
"They are devout in the sense that they publicly display their preference for a traditionalist Church and its devotions, such as the rosary. They are schismatics because they openly promote the undermining of the bishop of Rome among the Catholic faithful," Massimo Faggioli wrote in a July 16 essay for La Croix magazine.
Faggioli made specific mention of three U.S. bishops among those he called "devout schismatics": Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, and Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas.
The historian said the "schismatic instincts" of those bishops were manifested in August 2018, when they "sided with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal nuncio to Washington who called on Francis to resign."