Pope Francis vows to end sexual abuse after report

ROME » Pope Francis pledged Wednesday to rid the Catholic Church of sexual abuse and offered prayers to victims of former Cardinal TheodoreMcCarrick, a day after the Vatican released a detailed report into the decadeslong church cover-up of his sexual misconduct. The Vatican report blamed a host of bishops, cardinals and popes for downplaying and dismissing mountains of evidence of McCarrick’s misconduct starting in the 1990s. The report laid the lion’s share of the blame on St. John Paul II, a former pope, for having appointedMcCarrick archbishop ofWashington in 2000, and making him a cardinal, despite having commissioned an inquiry that found he had slept with seminarians.