Theodore McCarrick, once an influential Catholic Cardinal, whose Pope Francis released in 2019 from the priestly situation after the Vatican investigation confirmed that he had sexually harassed adults and children, died on Friday at the age of 94, said Archbishop Robert Mcelroy. TASR writes about this based on AP and AFP reports.
“Today I learned about the death of Theodor McCarrick, the former Washington Archbishop. At the moment, I think especially those who hurt during his priestly ministry. Thinking of their persistent pain, persist in prayers for them and for all victims of sexual abuse.”
Crisis of Church’s credibility
McCarrick’s scandal caused a crisis of the Church’s credibility, especially because there was evidence that Vatican and American church leaders knew he was sleeping with seminarists, but closing his eyes because McCarrick got to the top of the American Church.
The former Cardinal was consecrated as a priest in 1958. His fall began in 2017, when the former mini -player publicly stated that McCarrick was despite him. A year later, New York Archdiocese excluded him from its ranks. In 2019, Pope Francis was the first Cardinal to be released from the priestly situation in connection with sexual abuse.
The Vatican in its 450-page report issued on the basis of the results of the internal investigation, according to AP, gives the guilt of the former Pope John Paul II. In 2000, he appointed McCarrick as Archbishop and received McCarrick’s written statement in which he refuses the accusations. “I made mistakes and maybe I have sometimes lacked caution, but during the seventy years of my life I never had a sexual relationship with any person, man or woman, young or old, cleric or layman,” McCarrick wrote.
In the report, the Vatican also blames higher spiritual representatives of the United States, who, according to him, did not provide a sufficient amount of information about the former cardinal.
