Sexual abuse: report details Vatican hiccups in McCarrick case
The exclusion from ecclesiastical status of Theodore McCarrick, 88, is unprecedented in modern Church history.
REUTERS / Alessandro Bianchi / File Photo
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
The Vatican published on Tuesday the "McCarrick report", named after the former archbishop of Washington reduced to secularism last year by Pope Francis after multiple revelations about his sexual predations.
Publicity
Read more
With our correspondent in the Vatican,
Éric Sénanque
The result of a careful investigation carried out in the American Church as in the Vatican, the report published on Tuesday details the dysfunctions that allowed Theodore McCarrick to reach the highest positions in the Catholic Church.
The investigation lasted more than two years.
Over nearly 450 pages, the story of the American cardinal who became one of the major figures of the Church in the United States is reconstructed.
It especially details the progressive warnings on the prelate's sexual behavior, to say the least, ambiguous.
The turning point is under the pontificate of John Paul II.
As the testimonies accumulate that Theodore McCarrick "
shares his bed
" with seminarians, and despite the warnings of the Archbishop of New York at the time, the Polish Pope will appoint him to Washington in 2000 before he make cardinal one later.
The investigation reveals that the American goes to Rome to plead his case with the personal secretary of John Paul II.
Theodore McCarrick will also go through the Benedict
XVI
years without trial
.
The Vatican investigation notes that there are many “
erroneous and incomplete
”
testimonies
about the American that have allowed him to avoid any sanction for years.
No one is however specifically implicated, the Vatican wished to play the transparency but above all clears the successive popes under which Theodore McCarrick rose in the Catholic hierarchy.
He answers above all to the former nuncio in Washington Carlo Maria Vigano who had accused Pope Francis of having kept McCarrick in his charge despite his past.
Revelations which are "
a painful page in the recent history of Catholicism
" commented the Vatican on Tuesday.
A wound "still open and bloody" in the United States as in Rome.
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Vatican
United States
Religion