Former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been defrocked by Pope Francis after Vatican officials found him guilty of sexual crimes against minors and adults, the Vatican said Saturday.
McCarrick was a powerful fundraiser in the church. He is the highest-ranking clergy to be laicized by the clerical state. The action strips McCarrick, 88, of priestly connections and bars him from celebrating Mass.
Hundreds of priests have been defrocked for sexual abuse, but laicizing someone of McCarrick’s rank is an “almost revolutionary,” move for the church, Kurt Martens, a Catholic University of America canon law professor, told The New York Times.
In July 2018, Pope Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation amid the sex abuse scandal. McCarrick was a retired cardinal at the time and faced allegations of sexually abusing a minor nearly five decades ago when he was a priest in New York. He was also accused of engaging in sexual misconduct with adults while he served in New Jersey.
On Jan. 11, McCarrick — who had once served as the archbishop of Washington — was found 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 Vatican said.
The Sixth Commandment addresses sexual behavior.
McCarrick had been embroiled in a scandal that included an apparent open secret that he slept with adult seminarians. He was also found guilty by the Vatican of soliciting for sex while hearing confession.
The sexual abuse of minors by priests and its systematic coverup has been a decades-long crisis for the church. McCarrick’s defrocking comes days before Francis is set to lead an international gathering of bishops on the issue of sexual abuse among clergy.
An appeal by McCarrick was rejected and the Vatican said that the decision announced Saturday is final and no longer subject to future appeals.
Meanwhile, a U.S. lay Catholic group wants those who “looked the other way” as Theodore McCarrick rose to cardinal’s rank even despite abusing others be held accountable.
The Catholic Association, a conservative group, in a statement Saturday, called McCarrick’s defrocking “only a first step” in ridding sexual abuse from all levels of the church.
It said much must be done to hold accountable “those in the church hierarchy who looked the other way as McCarrick rose through their ranks” and also to ensure that priestly celibacy is restored and youths are safeguarded from sexual abuse.
The group noted that Pope Francis’ summit on sexual abuse starts on Thursday.
The Vatican said its investigation found McCarrick, who had served as archbishop in Washington, D.C., guilty of sexual crimes including solicitation in the confessional.
A U.S. Catholic church leader says the Vatican’s defrocking of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick shows no bishop is above the church’s law.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, whose own credibility in handling clergy abuse cases has recently been questioned, in a statement on Saturday called the punishment of a once-powerful American prelate “a clear signal that abuse will not be tolerated.”
DiNardo says “no bishop, no matter how influential, is above the law of the church.”
He leads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is based in Washington, D.C., the city where McCarrick had served as archbishop.
DiNardo’s handling of abuse cases in Houston has come under question. Two people who said they were abused by a local priest have said they felt DiNardo didn’t do enough to stop the priest.
An advocate for church accountability over sex abuse is demanding Pope Francis say what he knew about Theodore McCarrick, the disgraced former U.S. cardinal.
Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org says while his defrocking is significant, “most abusive bishops have escaped” defrocking. She says Francis should use the power of his office to laicize those bishops immediately.
Francis should also say “what he knew and when” about McCarrick.
Doyle is in Rome for the pope’s gathering of bishops about the crisis.
She says of the 101 accused bishops her group has tracked, McCarrick is only the seventh to be laicized. McCarrick was the first churchman who reached the rank of cardinal to be defrocked in the scandals.
One of the victims of defrocked ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick victims is expressing relief that Pope Francis believed his accusations of years-long sex abuse.
In a statement released by his lawyer Saturday, James Grein said he participated in the church trial of McCarrick “with profound sadness.”
Grein, the son of a friend of McCarrick, says that while he can’t regain his childhood, “today I am happy that the pope believed me.” He accused McCarrick of sexually abusing him for some two decades from age 11, including during confession.
He adds he hopes that McCarrick will no longer be able to use the power of “Jesus’ church to manipulate families and sexually abuse children.”
Grein says “it’s time for us to cleanse the church.” He testified in December in New York before a Vatican-appointed investigator.
The Vatican says Pope Francis has defrocked former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick after Vatican officials found him guilty of soliciting for sex while hearing Confession.
The punishment announced on Saturday for the once-powerful prelate and Archbishop of Washington comes a few days before Pope Francis is to lead an extraordinary gathering of bishops from around the world over the sex abuse crisis which has eroded the faith of many Catholics and threatened his papacy.
Defrocking means McCarrick, 88, who now lives in a friary in Kansas after he lost his title of cardinal last year, won’t be allowed to celebrate Mass or other sacraments.
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