GOVERNING OFFICE

In 2020, then-Archbishop Vérgez implemented protocols in response to the Covid-19 emergency. In an interview published on May 10, 2020, a few months after the imposition of confinement and isolation for the entire Italian population, he affirmed that Vatican City State had complied with all the preventive and health regulations provided by the authorities, to deal with Covid-19, especially with regard to visits to the Vatican Museums and the Vatican Gardens. But he stressed that in order to make museums alive, the living people present in them are necessary. “Virtuality can never replace reality: to enjoy art we need eyes and heart, not screens to touch.” That is why he proposed activating health protocols for official personnel, starting with the measurement of body temperature and the delivery of gloves and masks. He reported that the Directorate of Health and Hygiene of the Vatican government had transmitted a decalogue referring to rules of hygiene and social distancing so that everyone could follow it scrupulously.

Strikingly, there was no provision at that same time, nor was there any thought of making a protocol that would allow the celebration of the Mass with the faithful present. For the Museums yes, for the Eucharistic celebration no.

Covid-19 Restrictions

During the Covid-19 crisis, Archbishop Vérgez, working in conjunction with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, implemented some of the strictest restrictions in the world, following closely the health provisions imposed by the Italian government, and the policy promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO). These included the obligation for all Vatican staff and visitors to be vaccinated. This was despite persistent questions over the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines, and conscientious concerns that some of them had been produced using cell lines from aborted human fetuses.

The Vatican had implemented a Super Green Pass in 2021 that was extended still further on January 5, when Archbishop Vérgez announced that all visitors to the Vatican Museums and Gardens must also present the pass with exemptions allowed only on a case-by-case basis.

Three weeks later, Archbishop Vérgez said the Super Green Pass including a third booster jab would be required for all the remaining staff of Vatican City State, including all collaborators and external visitors. The participants of liturgies and papal general audiences were not mentioned in the decree and so were therefore excluded.

The Vatican fully lifted the restrictions and mandates only in June 2022, making it one of the last authorities in the world to do so.

Governance of the Catholic Church

For the Spanish prelate, being part of the College of Cardinals means taking on the mission of “helping the Pope in the governance of the universal Church,” which for him really means “supporting him in the fulfilment of his mission and his magisterium.” This means bringing his personal history, wealth of experience, and ecclesial and spiritual sensitivity of the people and the continent to which he belongs to the role.

Cardinal Vérgez has said that the challenges that constitute the problems facing the Church and the Pope are “above all those related to the social and economic situation of the world today,” represented by the “crisis of identity” that many people are suffering, “the secularization that has erased all traces of God from society in many countries,” and “the growing loss of the sense of sin.” He believes that “the Church must make her voice heard where human dignity is trampled underfoot, as in countries at war,” and that it is “also necessary to give greater impetus to evangelization and human promotion, looking above all to the excluded and the least in society.” Indeed, he added, forthcoming efforts “must focus on the protection of the environment and on getting completely out of the emergency of the pandemic.”

As can be seen, Cardinal Vérgez is strictly faithful to the pontifical agenda, which is why he omits any reference to the really serious, or rather, very serious, problems and challenges that affect humanity: genocide of the unborn, the legalization of euthanasia, the brutal concentration of the world’s wealth in very few hands and the growing misery and impoverishment imposed on the majority of the members of the great human family, the flourishing industry of human trafficking, the depopulation and de-Christianization of Europe, clerical homosexualization and the coexistence and connivance of the highest ecclesiastical hierarchies with it.

At best, he offers a generic reference to God, but at no time is Jesus Christ and his presence in the Church and in the world mentioned, despite the silence inside and outside the Church that seeks to ignore Him and eliminate Him from the public agenda.

His Ecclesiastical Career

Vérgez’s career advanced significantly quicker after Pope Francis’ election, partly due to him having already become well acquainted with the future pope in Buenos Aires.

The secretary general of the Governatorate at the time of Francis’ election was Msgr. Giuseppe Sciacca, who was close to Pope Benedict XVI, Msgr. Georg Gänswein and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then-Vatican Secretary of State.

Sciacca had to be replaced as soon as possible, and Francis soon identified Vèrgez as a trusted figure for the role in the Governorate, then headed by Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello whom Francis also trusted. Vatican City State would therefore be in “safe hands.”

Francis began to give orders to Vérgez on promotions and hiring of employees. Despite the fact that these were sometimes officially blocked for economic reasons of financial deficits, Vérgez would carry out whatever order came from Santa Marta, the Pope’s residence and office.

“The phone calls would be almost daily and Vérgez would carry them out,” said an inside source, helping him to climb the ranks, first becoming bishop and then archbishop. The source added that Cardinal Bertello would sometimes refuse some of Francis’ instructions, so much so that in the last two years of Bertello’s presidency of the Governorate, Francis no longer spoke with him but only directly with Vérgez. It soon became clear that Vérgez would be the future President of the Governorate. “The purple arrived for him,” the source said, adding that “never in his life would he have thought he would get to this point.”

Although an able administrator, he is not considered a person of “great theological depth” by those who know him, and when he arrived at the Governorate, he had no knowledge or competence of what the post entailed. He also gained a reputation for not taking responsibility for his mistakes. His closest friends are said to be all surprised at his blazing career.

Missionary and Synodal Church

Regarding the “reform” of the Roman Curia carried out by Pope Francis through the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium, the Spanish cardinal believes that with this document “the Church will be more missionary and synodal.”

He believes that one of the fundamental elements of the new Constitution “is precisely the missionary — to evangelize, both where the proclamation has already been present for centuries and where it has not yet been accepted.”

Climate Change Focus

Ever obedient to papal instructions, Cardinal Vérgez has been keen to adopt climate agenda policies for Vatican City State. In 2023 he agreed to lead a project installing solar panels in the large Santa Maria di Galeria estate near Rome. The initiative is aimed at making the small state energy self-sufficient.

SANCTIFYING OFFICE

Homily for the Beatification of Cardinal Eduardo Francisco Pironio

The homilies that Cardinal Vérgez have delivered throughout his priestly life and are available to the public are extremely sparse. In fact, only one can be found, the one he pronounced on December 16, 2023 at the beatification Mass of Cardinal Eduardo Pironio, celebrated in the Basilica of Luján, where the new Argentine blessed is buried.

In his homily, Cardinal Vérgez resorted to a letter from Pope Francis, dated 2008, to describe the personality of Pironio, whom he highlighted as “a humble Pastor according to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, a witness of evangelical hope and patience, a courageous defender of the cause of the poorest.” The homily drew attention to the personal human virtues of the new blessed, instilled and enhanced by faith, a life of prayer, the habit of contemplation, an intense devotion to the Blessed Virgin, humility and patience and hope in the midst of the sufferings and crosses that he constantly experienced throughout his service to the Petrine See.

On two occasions, the Legionary cardinal highlighted the virtues of Cardinal Pironio, which were mentioned as an example and legacy to be followed by all the Christian faithful. On the one hand, he said, was his example of “fidelity to the Gospel, to the Church and to the Magisterium of the Pope [St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II”], in such a way that he avoided all personalism, in order to “communicate the truth of the Gospel and the integrity of tradition.” Through a spiritual life that was “nourished by Eucharistic piety, great Marian devotion and veneration of the Saints,” he made the proclamation of the Gospel and mission “his daily goal.”

On the other hand, closely related to the above, he noted that Cardinal Pironio rescued as a legacy the centrality of the real and authentic presence of Jesus Christ in the celebration of World Youth Days, of which he was its initiator, promoter and great animator. Cardinal Pironio, Vérgez said, stressed that the objective of the Days was “to choose the Lord again and commit ourselves to serve him,  as missionaries in the heart of society.” It was, he added, to proclaim “the Good News of Jesus in the heart of society and to build with all men of good will the new civilization of love”, walking with “Mary, the mother of Jesus.”

TEACHING OFFICE

In this regard there is very little to present on the part of Cardinal Vérgez, except his adherence to the missionality and synodality of the Church, but without any reference or mention to the two-thousand-year-old Church “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.” Nor are there any references to the missionary mandate of Jesus Christ for the Church, to the crucified and risen Jesus truly present in the Eucharist, to the dramas of the anti-culture of death represented by the promotion of euthanasia and abortion as “new constitutional human rights”, as well as a total silence – neither yes nor no – to “homosexual marriage.”  etc.

In general terms, the Spanish cardinal maintains that the challenges that the Church must face are “those related mainly to the social and economic situation of the world today,” adding to this “secularization,” attacks on “human dignity in countries at war,” “protection of the environment,” “overcoming the emergency of the pandemic.”