Vatican investigation finds popes, bishops share in failings to stop disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick

A Vatican investigation into ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick has found that a series of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports that he slept with seminarians.

The Vatican took the extraordinary step Tuesday of publishing its two-year, 400-plus-page internal investigation into the American prelate's rise and fall in a bid to restore credibility to the U.S. and Vatican hierarchies, which have been shattered by the McCarrick scandal.

Ahead of the report's publication, the Vatican provided journalists with an introduction and executive summary of it, which put the lion's share of blame on a dead saint: Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, D.C., in 2000, despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed he slept with seminarians. The summary says John Paul II naively believed McCarrick's last-ditch, handwritten denial.

But the report also charts the alarm bells that sounded but were ignored nearly a decade earlier, when in 1993 a series of six anonymous letters were sent to U.S. church officials and the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S. alleging McCarrick was a "pedophile" who would sleep in the same bed with young men and boys. The ambassador destroyed the letters, and the U.S. church had a policy at the time of not taking action based on anonymous reports of abuse a practice that was recently reversed by the Vatican for the church at large.

Francis defrocked McCarrick, 90, last year after a Vatican investigation confirmed decades of allegations that the globe-trotting envoy and successful church fundraiser had sexually molested adults as well as children. The Vatican had reports from authoritative figures dating back to 1999 that McCarrick's behaviour was problematic, yet he continued to rise to become an influential cardinal, kingmaker and emissary of the Holy See's "soft diplomacy."

The findings accused bishops dead and alive of providing the Vatican with incomplete information about McCarrick's behaviour, and of turning a blind eye to his repeated flouting of informal restrictions ordered up in 2006 after Pope Benedict XVI decided not to investigate or sanction him seriously.

Most significantly, the findings largely gave Francis a pass, saying he never lifted or modified those restrictions, never named McCarrick a "diplomatic agent" for the Holy See and never received any documentation about McCarrick before 2017. It didn't say if Francis had sought such documentation after one of his ambassadors purportedly told him in 2013 that McCarrick was a predator.

"Pope Francis had heard only that there had been allegations and rumours related to immoral conduct with adults occurring prior to McCarrick's appointment to Washington," the summary says. "Believing that the allegations had already been reviewed and rejected by Pope John Paul II, and well aware that McCarrick was active during the papacy of Benedict XVI, Pope Francis did not see the need to alter the approach that had been adopted."

Francis changed course after a former altar boy came forward in 2017 alleging that McCarrick groped him when he was a teenager during preparations for Christmas Mass in 1971 and 1972 in New York. The allegation was the first solid claim against McCarrick involving a minor and triggered the canonical trial that resulted in his defrocking.

While the summary provided new details about what the Vatican knew and when, it didn't elaborate on the internal culture that allowed McCarrick's behaviour to continue unchecked. Catholic cardinals and bishops have long been considered beyond reproach and claims of homosexual behaviour have been used to discredit or blackmail prelates, so often are dismissed as rumours. There has also been a widespread but unspoken tolerance of sexually active men in what is supposed to be a celibate priesthood.

'He's destroyed thousands'

The church has long considered sex by priests with other adult men or women as sinful but consensual, with flags only raised in recent years when minors were involved.

But the McCarrick scandal, which erupted during the #MeToo era, has demonstrated that adult seminarians and priests can be sexually victimized by their superiors because of the power imbalance in their relationships. And yet the church's legal system has had no real way to address that type of abuse of authority.

James Grein, whose testimony that McCarrick abused him for two decades starting when he was 11 was key to McCarrick's downfall, said he was pleased the report was finally being released. He said he was hopeful it would bring some relief as well as a chance to "clean" up the church.

"There are so many people suffering out there because of one man," Grein said. "And he thinks that he's more important than the rest of us. He's destroyed me and he's destroyed thousands of other lives. It's time that the Catholic Church comes clean with all of its destruction."

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state whose office prepared the report, said it will have an impact going forward, especially on how bishops are selected.

"Reading the document will show that all procedures, including the appointment of bishops, depend on the commitment and honesty of the people concerned," he said. "[It will make] all those involved in such choices more aware of the weight of their decisions or omissions."

The bishops of the four U.S. dioceses where McCarrick served Metuchen and Newark, N.J., New York and Washington, all welcomed the report, despite the shame the McCarrick scandal has brought on the church and the pain he caused his victims.

"Like everyone else, I am disgusted and appalled by what has taken place," said Metuchen Bishop James Checchio.

He lamented that his diocese's founding in 1981, with McCarrick as its first bishop, would "always be associated with the history of Theodore McCarrick and the culture of abuse, silence and shame that was allowed to perpetuate in the dark corners of our past

Francis commissioned the report after the retired Vatican ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, issued a blistering expos of the two-decade-long McCarrick coverup in 2018, naming around two dozen U.S. and Vatican officials who knew of his misconduct but failed to effectively sanction him.

Vigano cited former seminarians who had described the harassment and abuse they endured while "Uncle Ted," as McCarrick liked to call himself, was their bishop in New Jersey, forced to sleep in his bed during weekend trips to his beach house.

Vigano's most explosive claim was that Francis himself lifted "sanctions" imposed by Benedict and made McCarrick a trusted adviser. Vigano demanded that Francis resign, claiming he had warned the pope in June 2013 that McCarrick had "corrupted generations of seminarians and priests."

Read the Vatican report:

Several of Vigano's central assertions were confirmed, but not the ones involving Francis.

"No records support Vigano's account and evidence as to what he said is sharply disputed," it said.

The report drew on documents from five Vatican departments, four U.S. dioceses, two U.S. seminaries and the Vatican's U.S. embassy. Investigators interviewed 90 people, including McCarrick's victims, former seminarians and priests, officials from U.S. charities and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Vatican ills also alleged in France, Britain

It was released a few days before U.S. bishops gather for their annual fall meeting.

It was also published on the same day the Vatican faced reckonings elsewhere.

The former Vatican ambassador to France, Archbishop Luigi Ventura, went on trial Tuesday in Paris, accused of groping and inappropriately touching young men charges he denies.

As well, an independent inquiry concluded in a report released Tuesday that the Catholic Church in Britain prioritized its own reputation over the welfare of vulnerable children for decades.

The Catholic Church received more than 900 complaints involving over 3,000 instances of child sex abuse in England and Wales between 1970 and 2015, and there have been more than 100 reported allegations a year since 2016.

The report criticized the most senior Catholic leader in England and Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, for failing to acknowledge any personal responsibility or show compassion for victims in recent cases examined by the inquiry.

As well, inquiry chair Alexis Jay bemoaned the Church's lack of co-operation with the inquiry. The Vatican and the Apostolic Nuncio, its ambassador to the United Kingdom, did not provide a witness statement to the inquiry despite repeated requests.