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The secret history of the 2018 elections in 84 color pages.
I’ll buy it
All the popes and countless ecclesiastical leaders knew of the accusations against Cardinal McCarrick, but for twenty years his case had not been investigated on the merits, to summarize briefly and in a polarized way the content of the Vatican report published on Tuesday.
The 460-page document, which can be read here in English, does not deal with the deeds of the former Archbishop of Washington, Theodore E. McCarrick, on which the Church had already ruled when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found in 2019 that McCarrick was guilty of abuse of power and confession. and in violation of Commandment 6 by initiating sexual relations with several young people and more adults. Since being ousted from the priestly order, the now 90-year-old fallen high priest has been living in retirement. Although an investigation initiated by Pope Francis and conducted by the Vatican Secretariat of State revealed the testimonies of the victims, the main objective was to establish the responsibility of each member of the Catholic hierarchy.
Disclosure of the research is itself a fact and raises worrying questions. Why exactly such an unprecedented in-depth investigation into the McCarrick case when we know of tens of thousands of cases of child abuse within the Church? Why were the activities of the numerous bishops accused of cover-up not investigated with similar thoroughness and, if such results were obtained, not made public? The Vatican does not give a clear answer to these questions, but it is not difficult to guess what was the reason for the special treatment.
That fell from the highest
The first is that McCarrick was a very important man in the Catholic Church who later fell very big. In 2001, he became Archbishop of Washington, who played a prominent role not only in the Church but also in the politics of the capital. McCarrick was personally honored and admitted by Bill Clinton, but he had received important diplomatic assignments from US foreign affairs since the mid-1990s. George W. Bush called him his friend and appeared with him several times, but also buried the Biden’s son, for example.
McCarrick was also sworn in as a cardinal in 2001, making him part of the narrow global elite of papal high priests. Over the decades, he held countless positions in various Vatican headquarters, traveled extensively and negotiated, and was also known as a fundraising magician. He also made donations from the common coffers for possibly noble purposes, but last December the Washington Post obtained documentation of the remittances he sent to about a hundred church leaders that had an impact on his career and the handling of funds. charges against you. Among them were the two previous popes, II. János Pál and Benedek (his former colleagues did not comment on this information). Other church dignitaries have stated that such gifts are common practice in the Vatican during the holidays, and the money has been used for charitable purposes or passed into official church accounts. The newly released report acknowledges the existence of these gifts, but assumes baselessly that they did not have a decisive impact on McCarrick’s fate.
He was the first cardinal in the millennial history of the Church to be subjected to the most severe ecclesiastical punishment, secularization,
that is, he was expelled from the order of priests or who was convicted by the church of child abuse. But even this does not make clear why Pope Francis violated the previous order, why he published internal documents on McCarrick, why he allowed a greater understanding of the decision-making methods of the Catholic Church than ever before.
Pope Francis’ reasons are probably at least in part political, if not downright personal. In a letter that caused a major scandal two years ago, the former ambassador of the Holy See in Washington, Archbishop Viganó, accused the Pope of personally covering up McCarrick’s sins and the so-called priestly pedophilia in general, not to mention the “gay mafia “surrounding the Vatican. Viganó later published several letters, but these contained so much material error and baseless accusation that after a while, not much water was stirred. However, the first letter was said to have affected the Pope in a very sensitive way, not least the immediate attack by conservative church circles and the political extreme right. The Vatican announced within days that the McCarrick report would be released as a kind of response.
The three popes
I did not read the 460-page text in its entirety, but by clicking on the individual sections and the investigation leadership summary, it is clear that many church leaders have a responsibility not to investigate the serial and decades ago against McCarrick. Several bishops and the Pope’s entourage in 1993 and 94 at the latest realized that there were allegations that McCarrick approached the seminary inappropriately. When in 2000 II. Juan Pablo made the decision to appoint him to Washington, the charges could already be classified into four categories, according to the report, and these were also sent to the Pope by the Archbishop of New York:
- a priest claimed McCarrick was harassed
- according to an anonymous letter, he also sexually abused his nephews,
- it was well known that he invited young people to his bed,
- and that the priesthood students also sleep in their beds if they are brought to their residence by the sea.
In a letter to the Pope’s secretary, McCarrick denied having sex with anyone, although he admitted that it was “unwise” to sleep in a bed with young children. The Vatican ambassador then launched an investigation, which was exhausted when he wrote a letter to the four bishops in the area that told him that McCarrick did habitually sleep in a bed with young people, but that they did not know of any specific sexual abuse. That was enough II. For John Paul to appoint archbishop and later Cardinal McCarrick, no regular investigation was launched.
XVI. After his election, Pope Benedict XVI learned the information about McCarrick and extended his appointment. Not long after, however, in a church investigation, McCarrick’s first accuser, a priest whose opinion had previously been ignored because he sexually abused children himself, was already credible based on new information. The Pope resigned McCarrick, but no one informed the public of the reasons. Benedict XVI’s advisers suggested that formal proceedings be initiated against the cardinal, but the pope rejected it and, as the report says, preferred to affect McCarrick’s conscience. First, in 2006, one of the Pope’s top cardinals was sent oral with a message to McCarrick to stay away from the public and travel as little as possible “for the good of the church.” Two years later, the same cardinal also put the proposals in writing, probably regardless of the fact that McCarrick certainly did not hold back, took up positions and traveled.
However, there is really no very genuine explanation for how McCarrick could have remained, as the report highlights, employed by various international organizations and Vatican offices while the Vatican wrote to him to live a life in retirement.
Already at that time, the aforementioned Archbishop Viganó, the infamous letter accusing Pope Francis, was the ambassador of the Holy See in Washington, so that the handling of the case was partly his responsibility, McCarrick sent him periodic reports on his travels and public activities, which the Pope in principle had rejected. Under the direction of the Vatican, Vigano should have investigated the truth of the confession of the victim of the third name, but did not.
That is, II. Both John Paul and Benedict dealt with McCarrick’s case extensively and formally, knowing that several people independently accused him of sexual abuse, but did not initiate proceedings, and not that secular authorities were not notified, but not even used. the church’s existing means of investigation. II. In the case of Juan Pablo, these findings are even more serious because he is not only a former pope, but a Catholic saint.
Pope Francis, elected in 2013, if we can believe the report, is responsible for all this, as he relied on the verdict of his predecessors and did not initiate a review of the matter. Although McCarrick remained active during Francis’ papacy, the retired cardinal in the mid to late 1980s was not the focus of interest. According to the report, Pope Francis spoke to his immediate subordinates about the case once or twice, but did not see any written evidence and generally believed that II had presented the case. John Paul investigated, as he knew, the “suggestions” that McCarrick should have lived came from Benedict.
Endgame
Had Pope Benedict or Francis made little effort to search, they could have been accessed by court records that testify that two US dioceses paid compensation to two priests who claimed to be McCarrick’s victims. The proceedings were carried out between 2005 and 2007, and in 2010 one of the renowned researchers on the subject also published these otherwise partially public documents.
However, McCarrick’s affairs only received much media attention after the Archdiocese of New York in 2017 confirmed a man’s testimony that McCarrick had sexually abused him fifty years earlier, at the age of 16. Then, the Victims lined up and, in 2019, the former cardinal had to leave the church.
By publishing the report, Pope Francis is cutting back on his conservative critics, taking a spectacular, if unique, step toward transparency, but he does not answer the question of why the leadership of the Catholic Church has worked in recent decades. and we can only guess how many such reports. to write. (National Catholic Reporter, New York Times)
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