Vatican probe details coverup
Internal report shows Pope John Paul II knew archbishop was accused of misconduct
An unprecedented Vatican internal investigation has found that Pope John Paul II knew about and overlooked sexual misconduct claims against Theodore Mccarrick, instead choosing to facilitate the rise of an American prelate who would be defrocked and disgraced two decades later.
The report amounts to a stunning play-by-play of the kind of system failure the Catholic Church normally keeps under wraps, describing how Mccarrick amassed power and prestige in the face of rumors, and sometimes written evidence, about his sexual misconduct with seminarians, priests and teen boys.
The report devotes a good deal of attention to John Paul II and the pivotal years of Mccarrick’s rise, but it also portrays Pope Benedict XVI as trying to handle the cardinal quietly and out of the public spotlight, and Pope Francis as assuming his successors had made the right judgments. It shows how American bishops sanitized reports of what they knew and all but ensured warnings would arrive at the Vatican unsubstantiated or dismissible.
The report goes further than any previous effort in naming names and providing details of a coverup. Such assessments have been long requested by victims of abuse, but they are nonetheless fraught for the church, because revelations have the potential to recolor the reputations of major figures within the faith, including John Paul II, who was named a saint in 2014. The report shows that John Paul II was told in a 1999 letter that Mccarrick shared a bed with young seminarians over whom he had authority. But, apparently swayed by a letter from Mccarrick himself denying that he’d ever had “sexual relations with any person,” the pope then gave Mccarrick an appointment as archbishop of Washington.