Vatican defrocks ex-cardinal for sex crimes
VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis has defrocked former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick after Vatican officials found him guilty of soliciting for sex while hearing confession and of sexual crimes against minors and adults, the Holy See said Saturday.
McCarrick, 88, who once served as archbishop of Washington, is the highest-ranking Catholic churchman to be laicized, as the process is called. It means he can no longer celebrate Mass or other sacraments, wear clerical vestments or be addressed by any religious title. He is the first churchman who reached the rank of cardinal to be defrocked in the church’s sex abuse scandals.
The punishment for the once-powerful prelate was announced five days before Francis is 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 the systematic cover-ups by church hierar-
chy.
And while victims’ advocates lauded the pope’s decision, they said he must also defrock those bishops who covered up for McCarrick and other abusers.
“Until Pope Francis holds accountable and laicizes the bishops who knew about sex crimes, this is not going to change,” said Peter Isely of Milwaukee, founding member of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and Ending Clergy Abuse, a global coalition of victim rights advocates that is holding its inaugural assembly in Rome this week.
The decades-long scandals have shaken the faith of many Catholics and threaten Francis’ papacy.
Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki acknowledged the church’s sins in a letter to the faithful last fall, saying, “There is no doubt that the handling of allegations by bishops and others, and the attempted cover-up by bishops and the institutional church, has led to the destruction of innocent lives.”
The Milwaukee Archdiocese is one of more than a dozen in the United States that have filed for bankruptcy protection to settle abuse claims going back decades.
The scandal swirling around McCarrick was particularly damning to the church’s reputation because it apparently was an open secret in some church circles that he slept with adult seminar ians. Francis removed McCarrick as a cardinal in July after a U.S. church investigation deemed credible an allegation that he fondled a teenage altar boy in the 1970s.
The Vatican’s press office said the Holy See’s doctrinal watchdog office, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, found McCarrick on Jan. 11 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 commandment forbids adultery.
McCarrick appealed, but the ruling was upheld and McCarrick was notified Friday.
One victim, James Grein, the son of a family friend of McCarrick’s, had testified that McCarrick had abused him for decades beginning when he was 11 and that he frequently groped him during confession.
“Today I am happy that the pope believed me,” Grein said in a statement.
McCarrick’s civil lawyer, Barry Coburn, said Saturday that his client had no comment. Coburn also declined to say whether McCarrick was still living at the Kansas friary where he moved while his investigation was pending.
In addition to the bishops, about 50 victims’ rights advocates from around the world are also converging on Rome in advance of the summit. They are demanding that Francis, other Vatican officials and bishops elsewhere explain how McCarrick managed such a meteoric rise through church ranks despite reports
“The pope has known from the earliest days of his papacy, or he should have known, that ex-cardinal McCarrick was a sexual predator.” Anne Barrett Doyle,
an advocate at BishopAccountability.org.
about his sexual life.
“The pope has known from the earliest days of his papacy, or he should have known, that ex-cardinal McCarrick was a sexual predator,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, an advocate at BishopAccountability.org.
Of the defrocking, Doyle said: “Let McCarrick be the first of many. I can think of 10 other bishops who are substantively, credibly accused of sexual abuse with minor and sexual misconduct with adults, who should be laicized.”
It was not clear whether she was referencing among them retired Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who resigned in 2002 after it became public that he had paid $450,000 to a man who accused him of sexual abuse. Weakland maintained that the relationship was consensual.
A conservative lay group, The Catholic Association, said in a statement that more must be done to hold accountable “those in the church hierarchy who looked the other way as McCarrick rose through their ranks” and to ensure that priestly celibacy is restored and youths are safeguarded from sexual abuse.
McCarrick was ordained in his native New York City in 1958, taking a vow of celibacy in accordance with church rules on priests. Later, he curried cachet at the Vatican as a stellar fundraiser. A globetrotting powerbroker, McCarrick liked to be called “Uncle Ted” by the young seminarians he courted.
Despite apparent common knowledge in church circles of his sexual behavior, McCarrick rose up through the ranks, even serving as the spokesman for fellow U.S. bishops when they enacted a “zero tolerance” policy against sexually abusive priests in 2002.
Francis himself became implicated in the decades-long McCarrick cover-up after a former Vatican ambassador to Washington accused the pope of rehabilitating the cardinal from sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI despite being told of his penchant for young men.
Francis hasn’t responded to those claims but ordered a limited Vatican investigation. The Vatican has acknowledged the outcome may produce evidence that mistakes were made and said Francis would “follow the path of truth, wherever it may lead.”
Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this story from Milwaukee.