ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Agency
May 28, 2019
By Ed Condon
A former priest-secretary to Theodore McCarrick has issued a report that claims to contain excerpted quotes from correspondence between the disgraced former cardinal McCarrick and various church officials.
The quotes seem to contain admissions of wrongdoing from McCarrick, and to confirm subsequent reports about the Vatican’s response to the former cardinal’s behavior. But some Vatican officials have said Figueiredo’s report does not fully explain the ways in which McCarrick operated in the Vatican.
Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo of the Archdiocese of Newark published a website, “The Figueiredo Report,” May 28 which contains apparent excerpts from private correspondence between McCarrick, the priest, and various other Church officials.
News of the priest’s report was first reported by CBS News and news site Crux.
Neither the full text of the correspondence nor images of the letters have been published on Figueiredo’s site.
“I present facts from correspondence that I hold relevant to questions still surrounding McCarrick.”
“These facts show clearly that high-ranking prelates likely had knowledge of McCarrick’s actions and of restrictions imposed upon him during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. They also clearly show that these restrictions were not enforced even before the pontificate of Francis,” Figueiredo’s report claims.
“It is not my place to judge to what extent the fault lies with the failure to impose canonical penalties, instead of mere restrictions, at the start, or with other Church leaders who later failed to expose McCarrick’s behavior and the impropriety of his continued public activity, and indeed may have encouraged it,” the priest writes.
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