Theodore McCarrick
Theodore Edgar McCarrick was an American Roman Catholic bishop and cardinal who was Archbishop of Newark from 1986 to 2000 and Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006. In 2019, McCarrick was dismissed and laicized by Pope Francis after being convicted of sexual misconduct in a canonical trial.
Ordained a priest in 1958, McCarrick became an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1977. He then became Bishop of Metuchen in 1981. From 1986 to 2000, he served as Archbishop of Newark. He was appointed Archbishop of Washington in 2000 and made a cardinal in 2001. A prolific fundraiser, he was connected to prominent politicians and was considered a power broker in Washington, D.C. After his mandatory age-related retirement from Washington in 2006, he continued traveling the globe on the unofficial behalf of Pope Francis. Within the church, McCarrick was generally regarded as a champion of progressive Catholics.
McCarrick was accused of engaging in sexual misconduct with adult male seminarians. Multiple reports about his alleged misconduct were made to American bishops and the Holy See, but McCarrick vehemently denied the allegations to the Vatican. After a credible allegation of repeated sexual misconduct towards boys and seminarians was lodged with the Archdiocese of New York, McCarrick was removed from public ministry in 2018. The following month, The New York Times published a story detailing a pattern of sexual abuse of male seminarians and minors by McCarrick, leading him to resign from the College of Cardinals. After a church investigation and trial, McCarrick was found guilty of sexual crimes against adults and minors and abuse of power and dismissed from the clerical state in 2019. He was the most senior church official in modern times to be laicized, and his was the first known case of a cardinal resigning from the College of Cardinals and being laicized for sexual abuse.
McCarrick's case sparked demands for accountability and reform in the Catholic Church. Pope Francis ordered "a thorough study" of the Vatican's records on McCarrick "to ascertain all the relevant facts, to place them in their historical context and to evaluate them objectively". The study was published by the Secretariat of State in 2020.
Early life and education
An only child, McCarrick was born on July 7, 1930, into an Irish American family in New York City to Theodore E. and Margaret T. McCarrick. His father was a ship captain who died from tuberculosis when McCarrick was three years old, and his mother then worked at an automobile parts factory in The Bronx. As a child, McCarrick served as an altar boy at the Church of the Incarnation in Washington Heights.He was expelled from the Jesuit Xavier High School in his junior year for missing classes. McCarrick missed an academic year due to the expulsion, but a family friend was able to help get him into the Jesuit Fordham Preparatory School. At Fordham, he was elected student council president and served in the ROTC program for the United States Air Force. McCarrick studied in Switzerland for a year before returning to the United States and attending Fordham University.
McCarrick later entered St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, from where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and a Master of Arts in theology. McCarrick was a polyglot, speaking five languages.
Priesthood
McCarrick was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Francis Spellman, Archbishop of New York, on May 31, 1958. From 1958 to 1963, he furthered his studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., earning a PhD in sociology. He then served as an assistant chaplain at the Catholic University, becoming dean of students and director of development.McCarrick served as president of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico from 1965 to 1969, and was given the honorary title of Domestic Prelate of His Holiness in 1965. While president, he was one of the authors of the Land O'Lakes Statement in 1967. In 1969, Cardinal Terence Cooke recalled McCarrick to New York. McCarrick was an associate secretary for education and an assistant priest at Blessed Sacrament parish from 1969 to 1971. He was Cooke's secretary from 1971 to 1977. He was later accused of sexually abusing a male minor during this period.
Episcopal career
Auxiliary bishop of New York
In May 1977, McCarrick was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of New York and Titular Bishop of Rusibisir by Pope Paul VI. He received his episcopal consecration on the following June 29 from Cardinal Cooke, with Archbishop John Maguire and Bishop Patrick Ahern serving as co-consecrators. He selected as his episcopal motto "Come Lord Jesus". As an auxiliary to Cardinal Cooke, he served as vicar of East Manhattan and the Harlems.Bishop of Metuchen
On November 19, 1981, McCarrick was appointed the first bishop of the Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey. He was installed at St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral on January 31, 1982. During his tenure, McCarrick erected new parishes in Perth Amboy, Califon, Skillman, Old Bridge, and Three Bridges. He was also on the Bishops' Ad Hoc Committee that revised the New American Bible in 1986 and oversaw the development of the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women, Bishop's Annual Appeal, and ministries for blacks and Hispanics, anti-abortion activities, and the disabled.In 2001 a Catholic high school, originally established in 1885 and renamed multiple times, was named Cardinal McCarrick High School in honor of McCarrick as the first bishop of the diocese. The school, which was located in South Amboy, closed in June 2015 for "financial reasons" shortly before a fourth teacher within 10 years was arrested for sexual misconduct.
Archbishop of Newark
On May 30, 1986, McCarrick was appointed the fourth Archbishop of Newark. He succeeded Peter Leo Gerety, and was installed at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart on the following July 25. During his tenure, he established the Office of Evangelization, ministries for Hispanics and victims of HIV, and a drug prevention program. He also promoted vocations, and ordained a total of 200 priests for the archdiocese.McCarrick became known as an advocate for social justice, once saying, "he Church cannot be authentic unless it takes care of the poor, the newcomers, the needy." During the 1980s, he served as an official observer to the Helsinki Commission and the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe at the behest of the U.S. State Department. In 1988, he participated in an interfaith meeting with Fidel Castro to promote religious freedom in Cuba, the first meeting of its kind subsequent to the fall of Fulgencio Batista. McCarrick, as a representative of Irish immigrant families, was chosen to be placed in the Ellis Island Hall of Fame on December 8, 1990.
Within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, he served as chairman of the Committee on Aid to the Church in Central and Eastern Europe from 1992 to 1997. In this capacity, he visited such countries as Serbia and Montenegro, the Baltics, and Kazakhstan. He was twice elected to head the USCCB's Committee on Migration, and once asked the United States Congress "to recognize and support the important task of nurturing new citizens so that they may begin to play a full role in the future of this nation." He later became a member of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples.
He was elected chairman of the Bishops' Committee on International Policy in 1996. He visited Bosnia, China, Poland, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, and Switzerland. Joined by Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, he announced an initiative in 1997 to assure that Catholic school uniforms in his archdiocese would not be manufactured in sweatshops. In 1998, in addition to his duties as archbishop, McCarrick was designated as superior of the Roman Catholic Mission sui iuris of the Turks and Caicos Islands; he delegated this mission to priests of the Neocatechumenal Way.
Archbishop of Washington
In 1999, Pope John Paul II informed Cardinal John O'Connor that he was considering appointing McCarrick the Archbishop of Washington, D.C.. O'Connor wrote to Gabriel Montalvo Higuera, the papal nuncio to the United States, informing him of reports of misconduct by McCarrick. Following an investigation, Montalvo advised against appointing McCarrick. In July 2000, Pope John Paul II decided not to appoint McCarrick as bishop of Washington. After McCarrick made efforts to persuade the Pope of his innocence, the Pope appointed McCarrick Archbishop of Washington, D.C. in November 2000. McCarrick was formally installed as the fifth archbishop of Washington at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle on January 3, 2001. On February 21, 2001, John Paul made him a cardinal, assigning him as cardinal priest to the titular church of Santi Nereo e Achilleo. He was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI.In June 2004, McCarrick was accused of intentionally misreading a letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger recommending that Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights be denied the Eucharist. McCarrick led a successful push to have the USCCB allow the bishops of individual dioceses to determine who was or was not eligible to receive the sacrament of communion. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus said, "The bishops I have talked to have no doubt that presentation did not accurately represent the communication from Cardinal Ratzinger." McCarrick said that he did not want to cause "a confrontation with the Sacred Body of the Lord Jesus in my hand," and added that "the individual should be the one who decides whether or not he is in communion with the Church" and therefore eligible to receive the sacrament. McCarrick later met with then U.S. Senator John Kerry, a Catholic and the Democratic nominee in that year's presidential election. Some Catholics felt Kerry should not have been allowed to receive Communion due to his political position favoring abortion rights.
Although McCarrick was sometimes labelled a liberal, he was noted for adhering to church teaching on abortion, same-sex marriage, and the male-only priesthood. Catholic journalist Michael Sean Winters disputed this, writing, "Liberals embraced him as a champion of moderation at a time when the Church was seen as increasingly reactionary. I always thought he was playing to the cameras."