Pope Francis emerged relatively unscathed from the Vatican’s internal investigation into sexual abuse allegations made against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who for decades was one of the most powerful leaders in the American Catholic Church.
The report, released on Tuesday, laid the bulk of the blame for McCarrick’s rise on Pope John Paul II, who incardinated McCarrick in 2001 despite knowing of allegations made against the then-bishop of Washington, D.C. The report adds that although John Paul II’s successors, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Francis, also knew of the allegations, because of the cleric’s “retirement and advanced age,” they chose not to investigate him further.
That changed, however, in 2018 when a letter from Archbishop Carlo Vigano, the former papal nuncio to the United States, publicly accused McCarrick of abusing young men and concocting a vast conspiracy to cover up his misdeeds. Vigano claimed that the cover-ups penetrated deep into the Vatican and called on both Francis and McCarrick to resign.
Vigano’s accusation snowballed into a series of other accusations, lawsuits, and settlements that damaged the church’s reputation and resulted in a commission to study McCarrick and the report laying blame on John Paul II, who died in 2005 and is canonized a saint in the Catholic Church. John Paul II is considered a hero among many Catholics worldwide for his crusade against the Soviet Union.
Many of John Paul II’s defenders on Tuesday said that the blame he shares with both Francis and Benedict had been unfairly heaped upon him. George Weigel, the former pope’s biographer, wrote in a blog post at First Things that John Paul II was no more aware of the “rumors” and “gossip” about McCarrick than Francis was and that he shouldn’t receive any more blame than the other pontiffs.
Weigel said that the new revelations should not be interpreted as a mark against John Paul II’s personal holiness.
“John Paul II was the victim of a deception: a man in whom he had reposed trust, Theodore McCarrick, lied to him about his true character,” Weigel wrote. “Saints are human beings, and saints, in their humanity, can be deceived.”
Vigano, too, was critical of the report, which he said was intended to obscure his deeper criticisms of both Francis and the politics of church leadership in Rome. The report notably refuted a previous comment from Vigano, in which the archbishop claimed that John Paul II had no personal agency in making McCarrick a cardinal because of his weakened condition at the time.
Instead, the report emphasizes that John Paul II “made the decision personally” and was “explicit” in his instructions that McCarrick be made cardinal in Washington, D.C., which is one of the most powerful seats of Catholicism in the U.S.
Vigano, in a statement responding to the report, said that this and other aspersions cast on his criticisms of the Francis papacy are part of “the Vatican fiction.” The report takes issue with one of Vigano’s central claims: that Francis had lifted sanctions placed on McCarrick during the Benedict papacy, saying that “no record supports” that version of events.
“I cannot help expressing my indignation in seeing the same accusations of cover up being made against me, when in fact I repeatedly denounced the inaction of the Holy See in the face of the gravity of the accusations concerning McCarrick’s conduct,” Vigano wrote, referring to the times he internally alerted the Benedict and Francis papacies of allegations made against the ex-cardinal.
The Vatican laicized McCarrick in 2019 after multiple people came forward with accusations that he abused them when they were young men and boys.
