WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service
December 27, 2018
By Carol Zimmermann
2018 will no doubt be remembered as a dark time for the U.S. Catholic Church.
Catholics felt betrayed by church leaders accused of sexual misconduct and cover-up revealed this summer and this cloud still hung over the church at the year’s end.
In June, allegations were made against then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, retired archbishop of Washington, accused of sexually abusing a minor almost 50 years ago and having sexual contact with seminarians while he was a bishop in New Jersey.
A month later, Pope Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation from College of Cardinals and suspended him from public ministry, ordering him to a “life of prayer and penance” until the accusations against him were examined in a canonical trial.
The archbishop, who has denied the allegations, now lives in a Capuchin Franciscan friary in Victoria, Kansas.
Since these allegations came to light, Catholic laity and church leaders, including bishops, have been asking who knew about the archbishop’s alleged misconduct and how was it possible for him to move up the ranks in church leadership.
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