Cardinal in sex case first in 91 years to step down
McCarrick remains a priest pending a Vatican trial, but Pope Francis has ordered him to a “life of prayer and penance” in the meantime.
ROME — Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, from the College of Cardinals after allegations of sexual abuse.
The Vatican announced Saturday that the pope had ordered McCarrick to a “life of prayer and penance” before a church trial is held. McCarrick is the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic clergy member to ever be removed from the ministry over sexual abuse allegations, and the first cardinal to fully resign his position since 1927.
While McCarrick, 88, remains a priest pending the outcome of a Vatican trial, the pope officially suspended him from the exercise of any public ministry. McCarrick will also no longer be called upon to advise the pope and travel on his behalf.
Francis on Friday evening received McCarrick’s letter offering to resign from the College of Cardinals. The letter was written after allegations that the prelate had for years sexually abused boys and had sexual misconduct with adult seminarians.
A prominent Roman Catholic voice in international and public policy, McCarrick was first removed from public ministry on June 20, after a church panel substantiated allegations that he had sexually abused a teenage altar boy 47 years ago while serving as a priest in New York.
McCarrick said in a statement at the time that he was innocent.
Subsequent interviews revealed that some in the church hierarchy had known for decades about accusations that he had preyed on men who wanted to become priests, sexually harassing and touching them. Then a 60-year-old man, identified only as James, alleged that McCarrick, a close family friend, had begun to abuse him in 1969, when he was 11 years old, and that the abuse had lasted nearly two decades.
A New York Times investigation detailed settlements amounting to tens of thousands of dollars in 2005 and 2007, paid to men who had complained of abuse by McCarrick when he was a bishop in New Jersey in the 1980s and a rising star in the Roman Catholic Church.
On Saturday, the former altar boy whose abuse allegations started the unraveling of the cardinal’s lifetime of honors said in an interview that hearing news of the resignation felt like a “gut punch.”
The 62-year-old man, who identified himself only as Mike to protect his privacy, said he believed that McCarrick was resigning only because he was being forced to, not because he was accepting responsibility.
“I am kind of appalled that it has taken this long for him to get caught,” he said. “But I am glad I am the first one that could open the door to other people.”
Another alleged victim, who identified himself only as James, says McCarrick exposed himself to him when he was 11 and continued a sexually abusive relationship with him for more than two decades. McCarrick has not responded publicly to these accusations.
James told The Associated Press on Saturday that he hopes the pope’s acceptance of McCarrick’s resignation will help other victims “become free.”
“Basically, truth always prevails,” said James. “Thankfully, everybody in today’s world is more understanding of the harm done by individual priests, and now we can start to heal.”
McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct with adults was reportedly drawn to the Vatican’s attention years ago, including before McCarrick was appointed to the prestigious archbishop post in the U.S. capital in 2000 by then-pontiff John Paul II.
Robert Ciolek, a former priest, said McCarrick would invite him and other seminarians to a beach house, where there was always one bed too few, so one man would have to sleep with the bishop. Ciolek, who said McCarrick never kissed him or touched him below the waist but did give and demand unwanted back rubs, reached an $80,000 settlement with the dioceses for McCarrick’s conduct and the abuse he suffered at the hands of a high school teacher when he was a teenager in Catholic school.
Ciolek said the church imposed an agreement that he not speak to the media about McCarrick’s abuse, which it released him from this year.
Two dioceses in New Jersey — Newark and Metuchen — say they have settled two of three complaints of misconduct by McCarrick toward adults.
The Vatican on Saturday didn’t say where McCarrick would be confined nor when a church trial might begin.
McCarrick rose steadily and swiftly up the U.S. church’s ranks, from auxiliary bishop in New York City, to bishop in Metuchen, to archbishop of Newark, and then to archbishop of Washington, D.C.
Kurt Martens, a Catholic University canon law expert, noted that this was the first time an order of penance and prayer had been issued before a church trial. The Vatican has typically imposed that penalty after a trial, raising pressure on the church to find a stronger form of punishment if McCarrick is sentenced.
“You’re running out of options if you want to impose a further penalty,” Martens said. “I would not be surprised if he gets dismissed from the clerical state.”
Other U.S. Catholics who follow sexual abuse scandals hailed stripping McCarrick of his cardinal’s rank as an unprecedented shift in how the Vatican has dealt with allegations against top churchmen.
“The Vatican almost never moves at this speed,” said Terence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org.Inc., a Massachusetts-based group that tracks clergy sexual abuse cases.
The pope appears to “understand the gravity of the situation and further harm to the Catholic church’s status,” he said.
McKiernan wondered if the church investigation will reveal who among its hierarchy knew about the sex allegations against McCarrick and whether the Vatican will move to punish those clerics as well. He noted that the Vatican statement didn’t spell out why the pope was disciplining the cardinal.
“We’re still in the old world,” McKiernan said, referring to the Vatican’s avoidance of details about the abuse allegations against McCarrick. “[Still,] it’s a remarkable development.”
Much remains unanswered about McCarrick’s alleged abuses, including who in the church hierarchy knew what and when, and whether, as a supervisor, the cardinal handled abuse allegations appropriately in the dioceses he led.
“The resignation of one man is not the end, it’s really the beginning,” said Patrick Noaker, the lawyer representing the two men who said the cardinal had abused them as youths. “We now have to go out and find out if others were hurt.”
Resignations from the College of Cardinals are rare. The 1927 resignation by the French prelate Louis Billot was because of political tensions with the Holy See. Keith Patrick O’Brien, a former archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland, waived his rights as a cardinal in 2013 after accusations emerged of inappropriate sexual behavior, but he remained in the College of Cardinals until his death in March of this year.
One of Francis’ closest advisers, Cardinal George Pell, is the highest-ranking Catholic in the world to be charged in the church’s global abuse scandal. The 77-year-old faces trial in his native Australia on decades-old child sex abuse allegations. Pell has denied wrongdoing. Details of the allegations haven’t been made public.
Bishops have been implicated in the sexual abuse scandals that have stained the Catholic church’s reputation worldwide for decades, most often for their roles in covering up for pedophile priests by shuffling them from parish to parish and keeping the faithful in the dark about the allegations.
Earlier this month, an Australia bishop became the most senior Roman Catholic cleric to be convicted of covering up child sex abuse. Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson was sentenced to 12 months in detention by an Australian court in a landmark case seen as a strong warning to institutions that fail to protect children.
Critics of the Vatican’s handling of abuse cases point out that despite recommendations from its advisory panel, the Holy See still hasn’t set up a tribunal or other system to deal with accused bishops or cardinals.
It still is unclear just what church tribunal would decide McCarrick’s case.
“That system is going to [have to] be created exactly for this most embarrassing and prominent case,” McKiernan said.