Archbishop accuses pope of coverup
DUBLIN — The Vatican’s retired ambassador to the United States accused senior Vatican officials of knowing as early as 2000 that the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, regularly invited seminarians into his bed but was made a cardinal regardless.
The letter, an extraordinary allegation from a one-time Holy See diplomat, also accuses Pope Francis of knowing about McCarrick’s behavior in 2013 but rehabilitating him — a claim of cover-up against the pontiff himself.
The National Catholic Register and another conservative site, LifeSiteNews, published the letter attributed to Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano on Sunday as the pope wrapped up a two-day visit to Ireland dominated by the clerical sex abuse scandal.
Vigano, 77, a conservative whose hard-line anti-gay views are well known, urged the reformist pope to resign. He and the pope have long been on opposite ideological sides, with the pope more a pastor and Vigano more a cultural warrior.
Francis was asked during a press conference Sunday if Vigano’s claims that the two discussed McCarrick in 2013 were true. Francis said he had read Vigano’s document and trusted journalists to judge for themselves and said: “I won’t say a word about it.”
In the letter, Vigano accused the former Vatican secretaries of state under the previous two popes of ignoring detailed denunciations against McCarrick for years. He said Pope Benedict XVI eventually sanctioned McCarrick in 2009 or 2010 to a lifetime of penance and prayer.
Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation as cardinal last month, after a U.S. church investigation determined that an accusation he had sexually abused a minor was credible. Since then, another man has come forward to say McCarrick began molesting him starting when he was 11, and several former seminarians have said McCarrick abused and harassed them when they were in seminary.
Coupled with the allegations of sex abuse and cover-up in a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report, the scandal has led to calls for a full Vatican investigation into who knew what and when about McCarrick.
On Sunday, the pope issued a sweeping apology for the “crimes” of the Catholic Church in Ireland, saying the church didn’t respond with compassion to the many abuses suffered over the years and vowing to work for justice.