Vatican defrocks ex-cardinal McCarrick for sex abuse

moral authority of Francis and even the survival of his VATICAN CITY — Former papacy. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who in his McCarrick has been found prestigious red cardinal guilty by the Vatican of robes hobnobbed with sex abuse and defrocked, presidents, other VIP politicians as calls rose Saturday for and pontiffs, is now Pope Francis to reveal barred from celebrating what he knew about the Mass or other sacraments once-powerful American including confession and prelate’s apparently decades-long from wearing clerical garb. predatory sexu- He is to be referred to as al behavior. Mr. McCarrick.

The announcement Saturday, The Congregation for delivered in uncharacteristically the Doctrine of the Faith, blunt the Holy See’s guardian language for the Vatican, of doctrinal purity, issued meant that the 88-year-old a decree on Jan. 11 finding McCarrick, the former McCarrick guilty of archbishop of Washington, D.C., becomes the highestranking churchman and the first cardinal to be punished by dismissal from the clerical state, or laicization.

He was notified Friday of the decision, which was upheld upon his appeal and approved by Pope Francis.

The pontiff next week leads a summit of bishops from around the world who have been summoned to Rome to help him grapple with the entrenched problems of clerical sex abuse and the systematic cover-ups by the Catholic church’s hierarchy.

Decades of revelations about priests who have sexually preyed on minors and their bosses who shuffled abusive clergy from parish to parish instead of removing them from access to children have shaken the faith of many Catholics. They also threaten the “solicitation in the sacrament of confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power,” the Vatican said. That commandment forbids adultery.

On Wednesday, Congregation officials considered his appeal and upheld the decree.

The pope “recognized the definitive nature of this decision made in accordance with (church) law, rendering it as ‘res iudicata,’” the Vatican said, using the Latin phrase for admitting no further recourse.

The McCarrick scandal was particularly damning to the church’s reputation because it apparently was an open secret in some ecclesial circles that he slept with adult seminarians. Francis yanked McCarrick’s rank as a cardinal in July after a U.S. church investigation found credible an allegation he fondled a teenage altar boy in the 1970s.

McCarrick’s civil lawyer, Barry Coburn, said Saturday that his client had no comment on the defrocking.