UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
August 6, 2018
By Fr. Peter Daly
On July 28, we woke up to front-page news about my former archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals. He is the first and only cardinal to resign from the college as a part of the worldwide sexual abuse scandal. While two of McCarrick’s victims were minors, it appears that most were adult males. Most often, they were seminarians and priests under his authority. In McCarrick, the child abuse scandal is joined to the #MeToo movement.
It is painful to the whole church to hear the news about McCarrick. It is especially painful to the people of my own archdiocese, Washington, D.C. I have no desire to add fuel to the fire. I always liked McCarrick and appreciated his leadership on many things, especially on social justice issues. But I do have a few things to say about McCarrick and the related scandal, some of them from my personal experience.
First, we knew, or should have known, about some of McCarrick’s behavior.
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