NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

November 10, 2020

By Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham

A new report about a disgraced former cardinal had the potential to implicate three separate papacies in scandal.

On Tuesday the Vatican released a massive report investigating how Theodore E. McCarrick, a disgraced former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, rose to the heights of the Catholic Church, despite leaders receiving reports that he had sexually abused minors and adult seminarians over the course of decades.

Here are five takeaways from the report:

• Pope John Paul II knew of allegations of Mr. McCarrick’s sexual misconduct.

Pope John Paul II personally made the decision to elevate Mr. McCarrick even after a U.S. cardinal warned that he had been accused of sexual misconduct.

In 1999, when Mr. McCarrick was being considered to take over the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal John O’Connor of New York wrote…