Vatican media chief resigns over doctored letter scandal

Vatican communications department Monsignor Dario Vigano.

The head of the Vatican's communications department resigned on Wednesday after he mischaracterised a private letter from retired Pope Benedict XVI, then had a photo of it digitally manipulated and sent out to the media.

A week after The Associated Press exposed the doctored photo, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Monsignor Dario Vigano and named his deputy to run the Secretariat for Communications for now.

But Francis kept Vigano on in the department in a lesser capacity, indicating that he doesn't believe the problem was all that grave.


The so-called "Lettergate" scandal erupted last week when Vigano read aloud part of a private letter from Benedict at a book launch for a Vatican-published, 11-volume set of books about Francis' theology.

Marking Francis' fifth anniversary as pope, Vigano had held up Benedict's letter as a sign of the continuity between the two popes, to blunt critics who complain that Francis' mercy-over-morals papacy represents a theological break from Benedict's doctrine-minded, theology-heavy papacy.

'Fake news'
Vigano didn't read the whole letter, and omitted the part where Benedict objected to one of the authors in the volume because he had been a long-time critic of Benedict and St John Paul II.

A press release sent out by Vigano's office only contained Benedict's words of praise for Francis and the book initiative, without mentioning that he hadn't even read the books and had no plans to.