Vatican to issue report on senior cleric’s scandal
The Vatican on Tuesday will release its longawaited report into what it knew about ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexual misconduct during his rise through the church hierarchy, setting up a remarkable moment in the Vatican’s long reckoning with clergy sexual abuse and coverup.
The Vatican said Friday the report would span McCarrick’s entire life, from his birth in 1930 to the 2017 allegations that triggered his downfall. The Vatican said the report would cover “the Holy See’s institutional knowledge and decisionmaking process” as the American prelate rose through the church’s ranks.
Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick in February 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors as well as adults. The 90yearold is believed to be living in a retirement community as a layman.
The scandal erupted in June 2018 and, coupled with the revelations of a Pennsylvania grand jury’s report on abuse by clergy, sparked a credibility crisis for the U. S. and Vatican hierarchies, since it was an open secret that McCarrick slept with adult seminarians.
Yet McCarrick still rose to the heights of church power, even acting as the spokesman for U. S. bishops when they enacted a “zero tolerance” policy against sexually abusive priests in 2002. He retired as archbishop of Washington D. C., one of the most politically powerful positions in the U. S. church, in 2006.
Francis authorized a study of the Vatican archives for information about McCarrick in October, 2018, two months after the former Vatican ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, accused Francis of being the last in a long line of Vatican and U. S. churchmen who covered up McCarrick’s misconduct.
The Vatican said at the time it was aware that such an investigation could produce evidence that mistakes were made, but that Francis would “follow the path of truth, wherever it may lead.”
Even though Vigano demanded Francis’s resignation over the scandal, it was actually Francis who authorized a canonical investigation after a man came forward in 2017 and alleged McCarrick groped him when he was a young altar boy in New York.
McCarrick denied the initial groping allegation and has accepted his punishment, but several other men subsequently came forward saying they were also victims.
The Vatican report will come out just days before U. S. bishops gather for their regular fall meeting.