NATIONAL and INTERNATIONAL NEWS 28
Florida Catholic November 2020
CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY
VATICAN CITY The Vatican's Secretariat of State has published a report on Theodore McCarrick, saying that the Holy See had re- ceived inaccurate information about McCarrick from three New Jersey bishops before McCarrick's 2001 appointment as Archbishop of Washington. The false information presented by those bishops might have been instrumental in assuring McCar- rick's appointment as Washington's archbishop, and as a member of the College of Cardinals. Pope Francis first announced an internal Vatican investigation into the career of McCarrick in October 2018. The results of that investiga- tion were released Nov. 10, 2020. The report notes that allegations about McCarrick had been sent by Cardinal John O'Connor, then the archbishop of New York, to apos- tolic nuncio Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo in a letter on Oct. 28, 1999. That letter was subsequently shared with John Paul II, the report states. In response to those allegations, at the request of John Paul II, letters were sent to Bishops Vincent Breen and Edward Hughes of Metuchen, and Bishop John Smith of Tren- ton on May 12, 2000, asking for the truth about McCarrick. Bishop James McHugh of Rockville Centre was contacted separately about the same question. Three of the four American bishops provided inaccurate and incomplete information to the Holy See regarding McCarrick's sexual conduct with young adults," the report concluded. The bishops presenting false information were Bishop Hughes, Bishop Smith, and Bishop McHugh. The letter of Bishop Hughes, who succeeded McCarrick in Metuchen, told the Holy See that: "I have no factual information that would clearly indicate any moral weak- ness on the part of Archbishop Mc- Carrick." Bishop Hughes' letter dismissed the accounts of some priests who had reported to him being mo- lested or abused by McCarrick, even when, in one case, a psycholo- gist affirmed that the priest had been McCarrick's victim. Bishop Hughes noted moral lapses on the part of the priests accusing McCar- rick while dismissing their claims against the archbishop. In fact, the bishop's letter did not mention at all some incidents of sexual abuse or coercion that had been reported to him by Metuchen priests, according to the report. Bishop Smith, who had been an auxiliary bishop in Newark, told the nuncio that "I have never heard anyone make a substantiated accu- sation of immoral behavior against Archbishop McCarrick nor have I any evidence of 'serious moral weakness' shown by Archbishop McCarrick.'" But according to the report, Bishop Smith himself had in 1990 witnessed McCarrick groping the groin of a young cleric during a dinner with several officials from the Archdiocese of Newark. Bishop Smith's letter made no mention of that incident. Bishop McHugh, then auxiliary bishop of Newark, was present at the same 1990 dinner and also saw the groping, but he wrote in his let- ter that he "never witnessed any improper behavior on the part of Archbishop McCarrick." The mis- information presented by those bishops was accepted as true by Archbishop Montalvo, and part of what may have informed Pope John Paul II's decision to appoint McCar- rick the Archbishop of Washington in November 2000, the report ex- plained.
CUNNING PERSONALITY
The report portrays McCarrick as a cunning personality, adept at es- tablishing contacts with influential political and religious leaders. It confirmed that he cultivated relations with teenage boys and young men, referring to them as his "nephews" and asking them to call him "Uncle." Some of the nephews" would share a bed with McCarrick during trips and attend dinners at the bishop's residence in Metuchen, New Jersey, and later at his beach houses in New Jersey. Those nephews included semi- narians who report being coerced and compelled to share a bed with McCarrick, along with incidents of touching, harassment, and sexual contact by the former cardinal. The report explained that the Holy See, along with several U.S. bishops and the bishops' confer- ence, had received anonymous complaints against McCarrick in the early 1990s. Those were investi- gated by Cardinal O'Connor in con- nection with a possible papal visit to Newark, who judged that allega- tions McCarrick was inappropriate with adults would not present an is- sue if the pope were to visit Newark. In 1994, Mother Mary Quentin, superior of the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, contacted the apos- tolic nuncio, Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, to say that a priest had told her McCarrick had acted inappropriately with seminarians. Mother Quentin offered to put the nuncio in touch with the priest. After talking to the priest, Arch- bishop Cacciavillan contacted Washington Archbishop Cardinal James Hickey, who defended Mc- Carrick. The nuncio concluded that the allegations were "possible slan- der" and that Mother Quentin had reported them because "she wanted to make herself appear important." The matter was not investigated further. In 1997, Dr. Richard Fitzgib- bons, a psychologist, reported to the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops that a priest he had treated had been the victim of "sexual trauma" perpetrated by McCarrick. That al- legation was apparently not investi- gated. Cardinal O'Connor raised con- cerns about McCarrick in 1999, which led to Archbishop Montal- vo's questions to Hughes, Smith, and McHugh. Their letters of en- dorsement for McCarrick seem to have carried considerable weight in Rome, the report makes clear, espe- cially after endorsement from Car- dinals Hickey and Adam Maida, as well as support from Bishop George Murry of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.
TRANSFERS STOPPED
The report says that on three oc- casions, prospective transfers of McCarrick to other U.S. dioceses were stopped: to Chicago in 1997, to New York in 1999 and 2000, and to Washington in July 2000. In No- vember 2000, after the letters from the New Jersey bishops, McCar- rick's transfer to Washington was carried out. About three months before the appointment, Pope John Paul II had received a letter from McCar- rick through his personal secretary, Bishop Stanislaw Dziwisz. In the August 2000 letter, McCarrick de- nied Cardinal O'Connor's accusa- tions against him and declared he had never had sexual relations with anyone, while stating he would "do whatever the Holy Father asked of me." The letter convinced John Paul II that McCarrick was telling the truth, the report states. A footnote in the report also notes that people close to the pope said he was in- clined to believe allegations of sex- ual misconduct against clerics were false, based on his experience in communist Poland, "where rumors and innuendo had been used to damage the reputations of Church leaders." After that letter, McCarrick be- came Archbishop of Washington, and a cardinal. McCarrick was ordained a priest in 1958 and auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of New York in 1977. He became Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1981 then Archbish- op of Newark in 1986, and then in 2001 Archbishop of Washington, DC, where he retired in 2006. He became a cardinal in 2001 but resigned from the College of Cardi- nals after it emerged in June 2018 that he had been credibly accused of sexually assaulting a minor. Al- legations of serial sexual abuse of minors, seminarians, and priests soon followed, and McCarrick was laicized in February 2019.
ARCHBISHOP VIGAN
In addition to tracing McCar- rick's career, the report says that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan, who called for Pope Francis to re- sign over his handling of McCarrick in 2018, failed in 2012 to follow in- structions to investigate allegations against McCarrick. According to the report, Arch- bishop Vigan wrote to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Con- gregation for Bishops, in 2012, in- forming him of a lawsuit against McCarrick by a cleric identified in the report as "Priest 3." The report said that Cardinal Ouellet instruct- ed Archbishop Vigan, who was then nuncio the U.S., to investigate whether the claim was credible but Vigan "did not take these steps." The report also touched on Mc- Carrick's fundraising and habit of giving cash gifts to Church officials, which it said took place "over at least four decades." But the report deter- mined while the "fundraising skills were weighed heavily, they were not determinative with respect to major decisions made relating to McCar- rick, including his appointment to Washington in 2000."
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Vatican details decades of sexual misconduct
MCCARRICK REPORT
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