Pope John Paul II promoted a senior figure in the US Catholic church in the face of persistent rumours of his sexual misconduct, a two-year Vatican investigation has found.
The report, published on Tuesday, highlighted failings by successive popes, Vatican officials and US clerics who allowed Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to rise through church ranks despite multiple allegations of abuse.
McCarrick, a former archbishop of Washington DC, became the most senior figure in the Catholic church to be defrocked after a Vatican hearing last year found him guilty of sexual crimes in the 1970 and 80s, “with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power”.
Pope Francis, who was accused of ignoring the allegations against McCarrick, ordered an investigation in October 2018 – more than two decades after the alarm was first raised. The report largely absolves Francis of blame in the church’s failures over McCarrick.
The inquiry heard from 90 witnesses and examined dozens of documents, letters and transcripts from Vatican and US church archives. Its 460-page document said the US church hierarchy was aware of consistent rumours that McCarrick preyed on adult male seminarians, but “credible evidence” did not surface until 2017.
McCarrick has said he had no recollection of child abuse and has not commented publicly on allegations of misconduct with adults. Now aged 90, he is living in isolation.
In 1999, Pope John Paul II was advised that it would be imprudent to promote McCarrick because of “rumours” of sexual misconduct with seminarians dating back to the 1980s.
An investigation by the Vatican ambassador to the US, requested by the pontiff, “confirmed that McCarrick had shared a bed with young men” but said there was no certainty that he had engaged in sexual acts.
In August 2000, McCarrick wrote to Pope John Paul’s private secretary rebutting the allegations. “McCarrick’s denial was believed,” the report said.
Three months later, Pope John Paul appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington DC, one of the most prestigious posts in the US church. The following year, McCarrick was made a cardinal, and became a celebrated fundraiser for the church, travelling extensively and enjoying privileged status.
Pope John Paul’s willingness to believe McCarrick’s denial was probably influenced by his experience in his native Poland when the communist government used “spurious allegations against bishops to degrade the standing of the church,” the report said.
One of McCarrick’s alleged victims said he had been sexually abused by the cleric from 1971, when he was a 16-year-old altar boy in New York. Another man subsequently claimed he had also been abused as a child by McCarrick, and several former trainee priests alleged they had been sexually harassed by the former cardinal at his New Jersey beach house.
“During extended interviews, often emotional, [witnesses] described a range of behaviour, including sexual abuse or assault, unwanted sexual activity, intimate physical contact and the sharing of beds without physical touching. These interviews also included detailed accounts related to McCarrick’s abuse of authority and power,” the report said.
Under Pope Benedict, who succeeded John Paul in 2005, more information came to light. McCarrick was eventually told he should withdraw as a bishop, and Benedict accepted McCarrick’s resignation in 2006.
After he was elected in 2013, Pope Francis became aware of “allegations and rumours” concerning McCarrick’s past behaviour. “Believing the allegations had already been reviewed and rejected by Pope John Paul, and well aware that McCarrick was active during the papacy of Benedict XVI, Pope Francis did not see the need to alter the approach that had been adopted in prior years,” the report said.
But after a former altar boy came forward in 2017 alleging that McCarrick had groped him when he was a minor in the 1970s, Francis ordered the canonical trial that resulted in his defrocking.
In 2018, a retired Vatican diplomat accused the pontiff of being aware of rumours about McCarrick’s behaviour but failing to take action.
In an 11-page testimony, archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 77, a former Vatican ambassador to the US, called on the pope to step down, saying: “Corruption has reached the very top of the church’s hierarchy.” The accusations were seized on by Francis’s conservative enemies.
The report – a rare example of self-scrutiny by the Vatican – throws a spotlight on what Pope Francis has called a “culture of clericalism” in the church, with cardinals, bishops and priests considered beyond reproach and claims of sexual abuse downplayed or dismissed as rumours.[END NEW]