Following his visit to Dublin, Pope Francis refused to respond to the explosive allegation of the Church covering up sexual abuses.

Francis, talking to the reporters abroad his papal plane returning to Rome, said that the 11-page document published by the former Church official urging the pontiff to resign "speaks for itself,” Reuters reported.

"I read that statement this morning. I read it and I will say sincerely that I must say this, to you (the reporter) and all of you who are interested: read the document carefully and judge it for yourselves,” he said, noting that the journalists have "sufficient journalistic capacity to reach [their] own conclusions.”

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former Vatican ambassador to Washington, who published the document, accused a long list of current and past Church officials being involved in a cover-up for the former Washington DC archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who retired last month after allegations of sexual abuses. He is suspected of the abuse of a minor 50 years ago and forcing adult male seminarians to have sexual relations with him.

Vigano shocked the conservative Roman Catholic media outlets during the Pope’s visit to Ireland urging the pontiff to take responsibility and resign, claiming that Francis was notified of the cases of pedophilia after his elections in 2013 yet didn’t do anything to interfere. Vegano convinced that he was removed from the position in the state secretariat of Vatican because he exposed the corrupted cover-up schemes back in 2011.

Several Catholic sources have noted that Vigano’s allegations must be treated with caution because he is a known representative of an anti-pope conservative wing in the Catholic hierarchy and had been accused of misdeeds during the huge Vatican leaks scandal back in 2012.

Sputnik