EUROPE NEWS
NOVEMBER 10, 2020 7:18 AM UPDATED 12 MINUTES AGO

Report into disgraced ex U.S. cardinal shows failings by popes, top clerics

By Philip Pullella
6 MIN READ

VATICAN CITY, (Reuters) - A Vatican report into disgraced ex-U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick points to failings by popes, Vatican officials and senior U.S. clerics who let him rise through the Catholic ranks despite repeated allegations of sexual misconduct.

McCarrick, a highly influential figure in the American Church, was expelled from the Roman Catholic priesthood last year after a Vatican investigation found him guilty of sexual crimes against minors and adults and abuse of power.

With testimony from 90 witnesses and dozens of documents, letters and transcripts from Vatican and U.S. Church archives, the 460-page document offers a remarkable reckoning by an institution known for its secrecy, portraying a man long able to convince superiors of his innocence.

The report said that “credible evidence” that the former archbishop of Washington, D.C. had abused minors when he was a priest in the 1970s did not surface until 2017.

But it said the U.S. Church hierarchy was aware of consistent rumors that after McCarrick became a bishop in the early 1980s he preyed on adult male seminarians.

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