In a written statement, dated August 30, 2018 (see the Italian and English texts below), Archbishop Viganò, who served as papal nuncio to the United States from 2011-2016, says he was prompted to speak out after reading an August 28, 2018 New York Times article, in which Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean sexual abuse victim, says the Pope “recently told him Archbishop Viganò nearly sabotaged the visit by inviting the critic, Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who became a conservative cause célèbre when she refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.”

Davis was jailed for five days, in 2015, for defying a court order to grant marriage licenses, on the grounds that she had personal religious objections to same-sex “marriage.”

According to the New York Times report, the Pope allegedly told Cruz: “I didn’t know who that woman was, and [Archbishop Viganò] snuck her in to say hello to me — and of course they made a whole publicity out of it.”

“I was horrified and I fired that nuncio,” Cruz recalled the Pope saying.