ROME — The Vatican has released its 460-page report on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was found guilty of serial homosexual abuse in 2018 …
ROME — The Vatican has released its 460-page report on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was found guilty of serial homosexual abuse in 2018 and subsequently stripped of the title of cardinal and reduced to the lay state. The report contains significant archival data including numerous transcribed reports and written correspondence chronicling the history of accusations, denials, references, appointments, sanctions, and eventual punishment of the disgraced prelate. Francis commissioned the investigation in 2018 following the publication of an 11-page exposé by the former Vatican nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. In his affidavit, the archbishop denounced an ongoing McCarrick cover-up, accusing Pope Francis of lifting sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict on the wayward cardinal and making McCarrick a trusted advisor. Viganò claimed that shortly after Francis’ election to the papacy in 2013 he personally informed the new pope of McCarrick’s crimes and of Pope Benedict’s orders that McCarrick dedicate himself to “a life of prayer and penance,” refraining from celebrate Mass in public, and from participating in public meetings, giving lectures, or traveling. In his affidavit, Viganò said it was clear that, “from the time of Pope Francis’s election, McCarrick, now free from all constraints, had felt free to travel continuously, to give lectures and interviews” and that “he had become the kingmaker for appointments in the Curia and the United States, and the most listened to advisor in the Vatican for relations with the Obama administration.
