Pope Francis defrocked former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick on Saturday after Vatican officials found him guilty of soliciting for sex while hearing confession and of “sins” with both minors and adults.
McCarrick, 88, is the highest-ranking Catholic clergyman to be effectively kicked out of the priesthood amid the church’s sex-abuse scandals.
The decision came days before Francis will lead a gathering of bishops from around the world on the abuse crisis.
Decades of revelations about priests who have sexually preyed on minors, and their bosses who shuffled abusive clergy from parish to parish instead of removing them from access to children, have shaken the faith of many Catholics.
McCarrick rose to the heights of church power, serving as a major fundraiser for the Vatican and even acting as spokesman for US bishops when they established a “zero-tolerance” policy toward sexually abusive priests in 2002.
Francis removed him as cardinal in July, after a US church investigation found that an allegation he had fondled a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible.
McCarrick was ordained as a priest in New York in 1958 and held various positions in the archdiocese.
He served as parochial vicar for Blessed Sacrament Parish in Manhattan until 1981, when he was named bishop of Metuchen, NJ.
With Wires