A former Roman Catholic archbishop and cardinal has been dismissed from the priesthood after the Vatican found him guilty of sexually abusing minors in a sign of an increasingly hardline stance taken by the church. Theodore McCarrick, 88, one of the prominent figures in the church,
was defrocked just days before an unprecedented global summit of bishops
to discuss child sexual abuse is convened by the Vatican. The Vatican’s move makes McCarrick the most senior figure to be removed from the priesthood in modern times. ...
An earlier Vatican hearing had found him guilty of soliciting for sex
while hearing confession “with the aggravating factor of the abuse of
power” and ordered his “dismissal from the clerical state”. McCarrick, who retired as archbishop of Washington DC in 2006, was forced to resign as a cardinal
last July after a man publicly alleged that he had been sexually abused
by the cleric from 1971, when he was a 16-year-old altar boy in New
York. ...
Another man subsequently claimed he had also been abused as a child
by McCarrick, and several former trainee priests alleged they had been
sexually harassed by the former cardinal at his New Jersey beach house.
