VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press
July 31, 2018
By Nicole Winfield
The highest-ranking American at the Vatican insisted Tuesday he never knew or even suspected that his former boss reportedly sexually abused boys and adult seminarians, telling The Associated Press he is livid that he was kept in the dark because he would have done something about it.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Vatican’s family and laity office, spoke as the U.S. church hierarchy has come under fire from ordinary American Catholics outraged that ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s misconduct with men was apparently an open secret in some U.S. church circles.
An open letter Tuesday in the conservative Catholic magazine First Things urged Catholics to withhold diocesan donations to the U.S. church until an independent investigation determines which U.S. bishops knew about McCarrick’s misdeeds — a “nuclear option” aimed at making the laity’s sense of betrayal heard and felt.
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