Former Archbishop Slams Pope for Mpox ‘Propaganda’ as Virus Spreads

Carlo Maria Viganò, an excommunicated archbishop, slammed Pope Francis on Monday for spreading “propaganda” regarding a new variant of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, that is spreading throughout the world.
In 2022, there was a global outbreak of mpox that affected the United States, Europe, Australia and many other countries. There are two types of the virus—clade I and clade II. The previous surge in mpox cases was related to clade II and spread through close contact, with men having sex with men deemed as the highest risk. However, the most recent surge in the virus is a variant known as clade Ib and has concerned experts given its severity.
Clade Ib has been identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and neighboring African countries, with one case identified in Sweden and Thailand, according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Given the new strain’s recent emergence and quick spread through Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global emergency earlier this month. The virus’ spread has prompted leaders to assess their response, including Pope Francis who recently mentioned the virus and its impacts in a recent edition of the Angelus, a Catholic devotion.
“I wish to express my solidarity with the thousands of people affected by Mpox (monkeypox), which is now a global health emergency,” the Pope said in Sunday’s Angelus. “I pray for all those infected, especially the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo suffering greatly. I express my sympathy to the local Churches in the countries most affected by this disease and I encourage governments and private industries to share available technology and treatments so that no one lacks adequate medical care.”
However, in a post on X, formerly Twitter, Viganò slammed Pope Francis for spreading “propaganda” about the virus.
“[The pope] temporarily takes off the clothes of the expert climatologist in which he obsessively relaunched the narrative of the green agenda, to don the virologist’s coat and give his support to the psychopandemic propaganda on monkeypox, which is nothing other than one of the adverse effects induced by the experimental serum that he had so insistently recommended at the time of the Covid farce,” a translation of Viganò’s post, which was originally written in Italian, reads.
Newsweek has reached out to the Vatican via email for comment.
Viganò also criticized Pope Francis’ support of the COVID-19 vaccinations.
“Not only that: he does not retract anything of his criminal and reckless support for that mass vaccination that we now officially know to be ineffective, seriously harmful and deadly…,” a translation of his X post reads.
In July, Viganò was excommunicated because of his refusal to recognize the Pope’s authority, Forbes reported. His criticism comes as global leaders have expressed rising concerns with the mpox virus, which has fueled fears that schools in the U.S. might initiate lockdown protocols that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the CDC has combatted these concerns and said there are currently no plans to close schools if an mpox outbreak were to occur, NBC News reported.
The CDC also said that the risk of clade Ib mpox to the U.S. is “very low,” Newsweek previously reported, and all cases in the U.S. have been identified as the clade II variant.
Mpox symptoms include skin rash, mucosal lesions lasting up to four weeks, fever, headache, muscle aches, back pain, low energy and swollen lymph nodes.