WOODLAND PARK (NJ)
The Record and NorthJersey.com
September 8, 2020
By Abbott Koloff and Deena Yellin
Below is a timeline of events involving the two Jersey Shore homes to which Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had access while he was archbishop of the Newark Archdiocese. McCarrick was named the first bishop of the Metuchen Diocese in 1981, and became Newark’s leader in 1986. He moved on to lead the Washington, D.C., Archdiocese in 2001. In 2019, he became the first American cardinal to be defrocked after allegations surfaced that he sexually abused children.
November 19, 1981 — Theodore McCarrick, an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of New York, is installed as the first bishop of the newly created Metuchen Diocese.
January 3, 1985 — The Metuchen Diocese purchases a home on Baltimore Boulevard in Sea Girt for $180,000.
July 25, 1986 — McCarrick is installed as the archbishop of Newark.
August 26, 1987 — Monsignor Francis Crine, who had worked for McCarrick as his director of personnel in the Metuchen Diocese and was pastor of St. James parish in Woodbridge, purchases a home on Curtis Point overlooking Barnegat Bay in Brick Township for $562,500. He owns two-thirds of the home, on Squan Beach Drive. The other third is owned by Walter Uszenski, the principal of the St. James parish school.
[Photo caption:] This Baltimore Boulevard home in Sea Girt was purchased by the Metuchen Diocese in 1985 and later sold to the Newark Archdiocese. It is where seminarians say that they were invited on overnight stays with former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. It was sold to a private party in 1997. Photo from July 22, 2020.
January 29, 1988 — The Metuchen Diocese sells the Sea Girt home to the Newark Archdiocese for $275,000.
Late 1980s — At least two seminary professors raise an alarm with superiors about McCarrick after seminarians allege the prelate sexually harassed them at the Sea Girt home, watching while they undressed and sharing a bed with them.
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