McCarrick dead at 94
April 04, 2025
Theodore McCarrick, the former cardinal who became the central figure in the sex-abuse scandal in the US hierarchy, has died at the age of 94.
McCarrick, who was laicized in 2019, died on April 3 in Missouri, where he had been living in retirement at an undisclosed location.
McCarrick had been among the world’s most influential Catholic prelates, rising through the hierarchy despite reports—which eventually became concrete complaints—that he had sexually abused seminarians for years. In 2018, the Vatican finally authorized an investigation into those reports, which found them “credible and substantiated,” and he was suspended from ministry and surrendered his spot in the College of Cardinals.
However, the Vatican investigation raised new questions about how McCarrick had won several ecclesiastical promotions, and continued to act as a spokesman for the US bishops and for the Vatican, despite the rumors that surrounded him. A Vatican report on his years in ministry, released in 2020, failed to provide details about the other prelates who had supported him, or the bishops who had been promoted due to his influence.
Born in 1930, Theodore McCarrick was ordained as a priest of the New York archdiocese in 1958. He was made an auxiliary bishop of New York in 1977, and became Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1981. In 1986 he was named Archbishop of Newark, and in 2000—despite warnings about his misconduct—became Archbishop of Washington, DC. He retired from active ministry in 2006 at the age of 76, and was told by Pope Benedict XVI to refrain from public appearances. But he apparently ignored that directive, and was chosen by Pope Francis to represent the Vatican in diplomatic talks—for instance, with China.
After his exposure as a serial abuser, McCarrick was indicted on criminal charges of indecent assault in 2021, but a Massachusetts court ruled that he was incompetent to stand trial because of his advanced age and frail health. Another assault charge was dismissed by a Wisconsin court on the same grounds.
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