Pope defrocks former US cardinal McCarrick over sex abuse claims
vatican city (AP) — Pope Francis has defrocked former US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick after Vatican officials found him guilty of soliciting for sex while hearing Confession and sexual crimes against minors and adults.
The punishment for the oncepowerful prelate, who had served as the archbishop of Washington and had been an influential fundraiser for the church, was announced five days before Francis is set to lead an extraordinary gathering of bishops from around the world to help the church grapple with the crisis of sex abuse by clergy and systematic cover-ups by church hierarchy.
The decades-long scandals have shaken the faith of many Catholics and threatened his papacy. Defrocking means McCarrick, 88, who now lives in a friary in Kansas after he lost his title of cardinal last year, won’t be allowed to celebrate Mass or other sacraments.
The Vatican’s press office said that on January 11, the Holy See’s doctrinal watchdog office, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, had found McCarrick guilty of “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 officials “imposed on him the penalty of dismissal from the clerical state.”
McCarrick appealed the penalty, but the doctrinal officials earlier this week rejected his recourse, and he was notified on Friday. The
pope “has recognised 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.
That meant McCarrick, a onetime “prince of the church,” as cardinals are known, becomes the
highest-ranking churchman to be laicised, or dismissed from the clerical state. It marks a remarkable downfall for the globe-trotting powerbroker and influential church fundraiser who mingled with presidents and popes but preferred to be called “Uncle Ted” by the young men he courted. —