Theodore McCarrick

Theodore Edgar McCarrick (born July 7, 1930) is a laicized American bishop and former cardinal of the Catholic Church. Ordained a priest in 1958, he became an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1977, then became Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1981. From 1986 to 2000, he was Archbishop of Newark. He was created a cardinal in February 2001 and served as Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006. Following credible allegations of repeated sexual misconduct towards boys and seminarians, he was removed from public ministry in June 2018, became the first cardinal to resign from the College of Cardinals because of claims of sexual abuse in July 2018, and was laicized in February 2019. Several honors he had been awarded, such as honorary degrees, were rescinded.

A prolific fundraiser, he was connected to prominent politicians and was considered a power broker in Washington, D.C. Within the church, McCarrick was generally regarded as a moderate.

McCarrick was accused of engaging in sexual misconduct with adult male seminarians over the course of decades. Though multiple reports about McCarrick's alleged conduct with adult seminarians were made to American bishops and the Vatican between 1993 and 2016, allegations of sexual abuse against minors were not known until 2018. In July 2018, The New York Times published a story detailing a pattern of sexual abuse of male seminarians and minors. After a church investigation and trial, he was found guilty of sexual crimes against adults and minors and abuse of power and dismissed from the clerical state in February 2019. He is the most senior church official in modern times to be laicized, and is the first known case of a cardinal being laicized for sexual abuse.

The apparent lack of action from the church hierarchy in this case sparked demands for action against church leaders believed to be responsible. On October 6, 2018, the Holy See announced that Pope Francis had ordered "a 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". The resulting report of the Secretariat of State, published in November 2020, stated that Pope John Paul II was made aware of allegations against McCarrick but did not believe them, and that Benedict XVI, in 2005, upon learning of newly surfaced allegations, urgently sought a successor for McCarrick. The report avoided blaming Pope Francis for the scandal.