Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who has been excommunicated from the Catholic Church following criticisms toward Pope Francis, wants an X profile to be taken down after it shared an old quote he made about former President Donald Trump.
Viganò is an Italian clergyman who was excommunicated for schism in July after years of disagreements with Pope Francis over the direction of the Catholic Church.
He previously called for the pope’s arrest and has become a popular figure among some United States conservatives due to his support for former President Donald Trump and opposition to the acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community in the church, as Pope Francis has sought to make the church more inclusive.
On Monday, Vigano raised concerns about a profile on X, formerly Twitter, that posts his quotes after it shared an out-of-context remark he made about Trump.
“To avoid confusion and inaccurate or decontextualized quotations, I ask you to suspend the publication of posts under my name and delete this profile. Thank you,” he wrote in response to the quote, which came from a 2020 interview with the website One Peter Five.
“Now that I am free from my official assignment, the inspiration confided to me by Pope Benedict permits me to address President Trump with the utmost freedom, pointing out his role in the national and international context and how decisive his mission is in the epochal confrontation,” Vigano said at the time.
The archbishop previously served as a Vatican ambassador to the U.S. for five years. He was appointed Apostolic Nuncio in 2011 and remained in post until his retirement in 2016.
The quote, therefore, is not in reference to his excommunication.
In a separate post on Monday, Viganò wrote that the account is not his and “therefore does not reflect or express my positions.”
“Some of my quotes, reported in partial form, may be decontextualized and therefore misleading,” he wrote. The profile remained public as of publication.
Newsweek reached out to Viganò for comment via email.
Viganò was charged with denying the legitimacy of Pope Francis, having broken Communion with him and rejecting the Second Vatican Council. He previously described the trial as an “extrajudicial process” but that he views the accusations against him as an “honor” in a letter.
He wrote that he believes Catholics must question whether “it is consistent with the profession of the Catholic Faith to passively witness the systematic destruction of the Church by its leaders, just as other subversives are destroying civil society.”
In January, Viganò said Pope Francis should be arrested over a controversy surrounding a book written by a cardinal about sexuality in 1998. In 2020, he called for a ” mass exorcism” over the COVID-19 pandemic. He opposed shutting down church services to prevent the spread of the virus.
