“If the church shows itself to be incapable of responding with all its heart...all our other activities of evangelization will feel it.”

He said the Gospel story helps us “to reflect how to act in daily life, when there are misunderstandings” and “to understand how the father of lies, the accuser, the devil, acts to destroy the unity of a family, of a people.”

The statement contradicts Archbishop Viganò’s account of his meeting with the pope, in which he said Francis had never reproached him for organizing the meeting with Ms. Davis.

A Vatican source said: “The archbishop seems to have declared open war on Pope Francis and the Vatican.”

In the Vatican there are feelings of “bitter disappointment” and “restlessness.”

Cardinal Burke was among the first of a small number of bishops to come out in support of Viganò’s denunciation of the pope.