ROME – Italian Catholic-Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican’s former papal nuncio to the United States, in an over 10,000 word essay published Monday, accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of catering to a “reform” agenda and using his presidency to promote “LGBTQ ideology.”

Vigano also took the Ukrainian leader to task alleging that Zelensky promulgates policies to embrace, including gender equality, abortion and the green economy. The prelate then categorized the acceptance of LGBTQ people as a leading cause for the invasion by Russia along with rhetoric echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for attacking Ukraine.

The Archbishop writes that the Ukrainian President was a mediocre actor and comedian who rose to power as he blamed “deep state” forces in the United States, the European Union and NATO for triggering the current war and demonizing Russia.

Vigano claims that “Neo-Nazi movements engaged in military and paramilitary actions operate freely in Ukraine, often with the official support of public institutions.” This echoing the lies of the Russian President who invoked World War II to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying in televised remarks last week that his offensive aimed to “denazify” the country — whose democratically elected president is Jewish, and lost relatives in the Holocaust, NPR reported.

“The purpose of this operation is to protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime,” Russian President Putin said, according to an English translation from the Russian Mission in Geneva. “To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.”

The Archbishop’s essay mounting a defense of Russia’s invasion followed Patriarch Kirill the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and an ally of Putin, who repeated a long-held contention that the West wants to enforce the practice of holding gay pride parades as a test of loyalty to its values, which include the acceptance of homosexuality. The Ukraine war, he said Sunday in his sermon, resulted from the eastern regions’ refusal to acquiesce.

“If humanity accepts that sin is not a violation of God’s law, if humanity accepts that sin is a variation of human behavior, then human civilization will end there,” Kirill said on the pre-Lenten celebration known as Forgiveness Sunday.

Viganò’s letter portrayed the Ukrainian leader as an E.U. puppet;

“The image of Zelenskyy is an artificial product, a mediatic fiction, an operation to manipulate consensus that was nonetheless able to create a political character in the Ukrainian collective imagination and who in reality, not in fiction, was able to seize power,” the Archbishop wrote of the Ukrainian president.

Vigano was forced to resign after he arranged Pope Francis’ controversial 2015 meeting with Kim Davis, the Rowan County Kentucky clerk who went to jail rather than comply with a court order to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

A New York Times story reported the backstory behind some of the later Vatican drama after the Pope was informed as to the true nature of Kim Davis and the meeting.  

The newspaper’s reporting suggests the rift between Francis and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who wrote a bombshell accusatory letter about Francis’ knowledge of the abuse, could have been exacerbated by Viganò arranging a meeting between Francis and Davis during his 2015 trip to the United States.

The invitation “directly challenged Francis’ inclusive message and prompted a controversy that nearly overshadowed the trip,” the Times reported. An abuse survivor who had spoken to Francis at length told the newspaper that Francis told him Viganò nearly sabotaged the trip.

“I didn’t know who that woman was, and he snuck her in to say hello to me — and of course they made a whole publicity out of it,” Juan Carlos Cruz recalled Francis saying, according to the New York Times.

“And I was horrified and I fired that nuncio,” Francis said, according to the Times article.

In July of 2020, Archbishop Viganò accused Pope Francis of heresy for promoting the “legitimization of homosexuality.”

Newsweek magazine reported: “Vigano is well known for his anti-gay views and has previously called for the pope to resign. In a recent interview with Italian journalist and Vatican expert Marco Tosatti, Vigano insisted that Pope Francis, who he refers to using his given name of Jorge Bergoglio, is involved with a plot to “corrupt” the church by promoting homosexuality.”

“For Bergoglio and his entourage sodomy is not a sin that cries out for vengeance in the presence of God, as the Catechism teaches,” said Vigano. “Bergoglio’s words on this topic – and even more the actions and words of those who surround him – unfortunately confirm that an operation of legitimization of homosexuality is currently underway.”

“Let’s not forget that the legitimization of homosexuality is part of the agenda of the New World Order – to which the Bergoglian church adheres openly and unconditionally,” he later added. “Not only for its destabilizing value in the social body, but also because sodomy is the principal instrument with which the Enemy intends to destroy the Catholic priesthood, corrupting the souls of the Ministers of God.”