Already at the time of the publication of the "McCarrick Report" there were different judgments: Should the report presented in the week after the turbulent presidential election in the United States and shortly before the autumn meeting of the American Bishops' Conference on November 16 and 17 be earlier receive a lot of or as little attention as possible?

The 450-page investigation by the Vatican published on Tuesday deals with the life and work, the rise and fall of the now 90-year-old Theodore McCarrick - and above all, who knew when of his countless crimes.

Matthias Rüb

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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The former churchman, who was released to the laity by Pope Francis in February 2019, was Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006.

The post, which is of great importance in the Catholic Church of America as well as in the political and social life of the American capital, routinely brings with it the elevation by the Pope to the cardinal state.

In short, you cannot rise higher than McCarrick in the Catholic Church of the United States.

And you can't go any lower than McCarrick.

Passed by altar boys

The official title of the study is "Report on the institutional knowledge of the Holy See and its decision-making in connection with the former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick (from 1930 to 2017)".

So it is about a period of almost nine decades.

From McCarrick's birth in New York City to his rise from priest in New York to bishop in New Jersey and archbishop in Washington to the first serious investigations in his home archdiocese into allegations of sexual abuse.

In May Daniel Deckers described how pedophiles could wreak havoc under the protection of John Paul II.

You can read his essay here.

The investigation, led by the incumbent Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, came to the conclusion in early 2018 that the victim's allegations were "credible and well-founded". According to this, McCarrick had in the sacristy of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York in 1971 assaulted a then 16-year-old altar boy, to whom he pretended to adapt the chasuble. The result of the investigation was forwarded to the Holy See, and in June 2018 Pope Francis urged McCarrick first to resign from the college of cardinals and shortly thereafter suspended him from the priesthood.

Further revelations of incidents followed in the Dioceses of New York and Metuchen, New Jersey, where McCarrick was active in the 1970s and 1980s.

The image of a clergyman who systematically exploited his growing power for the sexual exploitation of seminarians and prospective priests emerged before the eyes of the public.

Most of his victims were no longer minors, but they were subordinate to him.

McCarrick used to call himself "Uncle Ted".

He had two beach houses bought from the Diocese of Metuchen, where the sociable “uncle” regularly invited his “nephews” from the seminaries to spend the summer or on other occasions.

And abused there.

An eleven page fire letter

From 2004 to 2006, while McCarrick was at the height of his power as Archbishop and Cardinal in Washington, New Jersey dioceses paid compensation of up to $ 100,000 to two victims of "Uncle Ted" granted out of court. Money never seemed to be a problem for McCarrick. The archbishop and cardinal, with excellent connections in church, politics and society, found patrons everywhere. Did the rich Uncle Ted from America buy benevolence and look the other way there with the generous donations to high-ranking Curia staff in the Vatican?

An eleven-page long, open fire letter from August 2018 from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was nuncio in Washington from 2011 to 2016, set the McCarrick case in motion in the Vatican. In the letter, Viganò accused around twenty bishops in America and cardinals of the Holy See of knowing about McCarrick's misdeeds and covering them for decades. Viganò named the cardinal secretaries of state Angelo Sodano (1991 to 2006), Tarcisio Bertone (2006 to 2013) and the current incumbent Pietro Parolin as the most important accomplices in the Vatican.