Pope John Paul II knew about sexual misconduct allegations against former cardinal nearly 2 decades before his removal: Vatican
Pope John Paul II knew about sexual misconduct allegations against disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick years before he was removed from priesthood, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Vatican.
The explosive 449-page report finds that the late pontiff, as well as high-ranking church officials, helped to dismiss or downplay sexual abuse charges against McCarrick, the once-influential American cardinal who was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019, following the conclusion of a Vatican investigation.
The Vatican explicitly blames John Paul II, now a Catholic saint, in the scandal involving 90-year-old former cardinal who rose to the top of the Catholic Church in the U.S. after he was ordained as a priest of the Archdiocese of New York in 1958.
Despite knowing about repeated misconduct allegations, the late Polish pontiff appointed McCarrick as archbishop of Washington in 2000, and then a cardinal in 2001.
The report, published by the Secretariat of State, comes after a two-year-long investigation into the abuse.
It finds that, for years, men with powerful leadership positions within the Catholic Church chose to largely ignore claims that McCarrick invited young seminarians to sleep in the same bed as him — or chose to believe him, instead.
The report also suggests that John Paul II might have been blinded by his prior friendship with the ex-cardinal.
“Though there is no direct evidence, it appears likely from the information obtained that John Paul II’s past experience in Poland regarding the use of spurious allegations against bishops to degrade the standing of the Church played a role in his willingness to believe McCarrick’s denials,” according to a summary of the report.
A few unnamed bishops in New Jersey, where McCarrick served as archbishop before being moved to Washington, are also blamed for misinformation.
“What is now known … is that three of the four American bishops provided inaccurate and incomplete information to the Holy See regarding McCarrick’s sexual conduct with young adults,” states the report’s summary. “This inaccurate information appears likely to have impacted the conclusions of John Paul II’s advisors and, consequently, of John Paul II himself.”
The report seems to absolve the current pontiff, Pope Francis, from any blame.
“Until 2017, no one ... provided Pope Francis with any documentation regarding allegations against McCarrick,” according to the report.
“Pope Francis had heard only that there had been allegations and rumors related to immoral conduct with adults occurring prior to McCarrick’s appointment to Washington,” the report said.
The current pope, the report concluded, believed that “that the allegations had already been reviewed and rejected by Pope John Paul II, I, 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.”
Those allegations included that McCarrick was “known to have shared a bed with young adult men in the bishop’s residence in Metuchen and Newark;” that he was “known to have shared a bed with adult seminarians at a beach house on the New Jersey shore;” and that he was accused of pedophilia in “a series of anonymous letters.”
In February 2019, Pope Francis confirmed the removal from the priesthood of McCarrick, who was then 88, after a panel of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith found him guilty on Jan. 11.
According to the National Catholic Reporter, the Vatican announced its decision on Feb. 16, saying that McCarrick was guilty of “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 appealed the decision, but the appeal was rejected.
Following the announcement of his punishment, seen as the toughest given out by the Vatican at the time, Pope Francis ordered “a further thorough study of the entire documentation present in the archives of the dicasteries and offices of the Holy See regarding the former Cardinal McCarrick in order to ascertain all the relevant facts, to place them in their historical context and to evaluate them objectively.”
