Anniversary Silence McCarrick Report
Title: No Word on McCarrick Report as Second Anniversary of His Removal Passes Quietly
Author: Edward Pentin
Publisher: National Catholic Register
Date: 19JUN2020
“The publication depends on the Pope,” said Cardinal Parolin in February. “The work that is done is done, but the Pope must give the final word.”
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is remaining silent about its investigative report into disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the archbishop emeritus of Washington, D.C., who was removed from public ministry two years ago June 20 after allegations emerged of his sexual abuse of minors and sexual harassment of seminarians.
The Holy See Press Office and the Vatican Dicastery for Communications have not responded to a number of inquiries in recent weeks by the Register, despite assurances from a number of prelates over the past six months that its publication was imminent.
In October 2018, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had ordered a “thorough study” of all the documentation in the Vatican archives to “ascertain all the relevant facts” surrounding McCarrick, who began his priesthood in New York and served as a bishop in New Jersey before coming to Washington.
The investigation was to build on a “thorough preliminary investigation” by the Archdiocese of New York begun in September 2017.
The documentation from that previous study was forwarded to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the purposes of the fuller investigation whose conclusions, the Vatican said in 2018, would be made known “in due course.”
McCarrick, who turns 90 on July 7, was canonically returned to the lay state in February last year. The CDF found him “guilty of the following delicts while a cleric: solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.”
McCarrick had already resigned from the College of Cardinals in July 2018.
In his only interview since his fall from grace in August 2019, McCarrick said he was “not as bad as they paint me,” that he did not “believe” he had carried out the abuse he was accused of, and that he blamed “enemies” for a campaign against him.
The Vatican’s report is eagerly awaited in view of how, despite many knowing about allegations of sexual misconduct over many years, McCarrick was able to reach the highest ranks of the Church.
Questions also persist about his role in procuring donations from the Papal Foundation for a bankrupt Rome hospital, and his possible influenceon the Vatican’s controversial approach to China. McCarrick had made a number of unofficial diplomatic visits to the country in the years before his removal from public ministry.
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