WASHINGTON (D.C.)
Catholic News Service via America
December 31, 2018
By Carol Zimmermann
2018 will no doubt be remembered as a dark time for the U.S. Catholic Church.
Catholics felt betrayed by church leaders accused of sexual misconduct and cover-up revealed this summer and this cloud still hung over the church at the year’s end.
In June, allegations were made against then-Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, retired archbishop of Washington, accused of sexually abusing a minor almost 50 years ago and having sexual contact with seminarians while he was a bishop in New Jersey.
A month later, Pope Francis accepted Archbishop McCarrick’s resignation from College of Cardinals and suspended him from public ministry, ordering him to a “life of prayer and penance” until the accusations against him were examined in a canonical trial.
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