Vatican releases McCarrick report

McCarrick at Davos 2008

Source: Vatican News/ICN

Today, (Tuesday 10 November 2020) the Vatican released an unprecedented 450-page report investigating how the former Cardinal and Archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick, was able to rise through the ranks of the Church in spite of allegations from many sources that he sexually abused minors and seminarians for decades.

The report includes dozens of letters, testimonies and transcripts from Vatican and US Church archives.

Among the finding in the report, is that Pope John Paul II was told of the allegations of McCarrick's sexual misconduct on several occasions by different people. In 1999, when McCarrick was being considered to take over the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal John O'Connor of New York wrote a six-page letter to the Papal Nuncio to the US raising concerns that McCarrick had asked young men to sleep in his bed with him and that some priests had been traumatized by his behaviour. He counselled very strongly against promotion.

Pope John Paul II requested an investigation, but the report states that three bishops in New Jersey, provided "inaccurate and incomplete information." They were asked to keep the enquiry a secret. After McCarrick wrote a letter to the Pope denying the allegations, his word was accepted and he was made Archbishop of Washington.

Soon after Benedict XVI became pope in 2005, he extended McCarrick's tenure as archbishop of Washington. When fresh allegations emerged , by Easter 2006 McCarrick was removed.

In letters in 2006 and 2008 Archbishop Vigano, called for a church investigation into the rumours. Instead of formally investigating the claims, however, Benedict XVI authorised a Vatican official to "appeal to McCarrick's conscience" and ask him to "maintain a lower profile and minimize travel." This request was not a formal command, and McCarrick continued to travel around the world freely on behalf of Catholic causes and institutions.

Archbishop Vigano became the Vatican ambassador to the United States in 2011, and was asked to conduct an inquiry to determine whether the allegations against McCarrick were credible. The report says that "Vigano did not take these steps."

Pope Francis was aware there were rumours, but the report says no one provided him with any documentation until 2017. Until that time he believed his predecessors had already looking into the case.

It wasn't until June 2017, when McCarrick was 90, that the Archdiocese of New York learned of an allegation of sexual abuse of a teenage boy in the 1970s. McCarrick was asked to resign in July 2018. Pope Francis suspended him from all priestly duties the following February and promised a "thorough study' of the case.

A statement from the Vatican reads: "What has been recounted in the massive amount of testimonies and documents which have now been provided through the Report is, without doubt, a tragic page in the recent history of Catholicism, a painful story from which the entire Church has learned. In fact, it is possible to read several of the measures that Pope Francis took after the February 2019 Meeting on the Protection of Minors through the lens of the McCarrick case.

"One can see this, for example, in the Motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi, which contains instructions regarding the exchange of information between the Dicasteries and between Rome and the local Churches, the involvement of the Metropolitan in the initial investigation, the indication that accusations be assessed quickly, as well as the abrogation of the pontifical secret. All these decisions have taken into consideration what happened, learning from what was not working, from procedures that were not flowing properly, from underestimates that had unfortunately been made at various levels.

"The Church continues to learn from its fight against the phenomenon of sexual abuse, including in this case. This became evident also in July 2020 with the publication of the Vademecum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that invited pastors and heads of religious orders not to automatically discard anonymous denunciations."

It concludes: "In the last two decades, the Catholic Church has become more aware of the unspeakable anguish of victims, of the necessity to guarantee the protection of minors, of the importance of norms capable of combatting this phenomenon. The Church has also become more aware of the need to protect against abuse committed against vulnerable adults, and has become more aware of the need to protect against abuse of power. For the Catholic Church, in the United States and in Rome, the case of Theodore McCarrick - a prelate possessing considerable intelligence and preparation, capable of weaving together many relationships both in the political as well as in the inter-religious level - remains an open wound, first and foremost for the pain and suffering caused to his victims. This wound cannot be treated solely with new laws or ever more effective codes of conduct, because the crime is also a sin. To heal this wound, humility and penitence is needed, asking God's forgiveness and healing."

Read the full report here: www.vatican.va/resources/resources_rapporto-card-mccarrick_20201110_en.pdf