WASHINGTON D.C.
Washington Post
November 23, 2018
By Julie Zauzmer
When Theodore McCarrick resigned his title as a cardinal of the Catholic Church in July, the church made one promise as shock waves rippled through the pews: McCarrick would face a canonical trial, the Vatican’s version of a criminal inquiry, for the sexual misconduct he allegedly committed.
Four months later, McCarrick has moved from Washington, where he was once the archbishop and then a prominent diplomat, to a remote friary in Kansas. Vatican leaders have said no to American bishops’ request that the Vatican conduct an investigation here into the disgraced ex-cardinal’s behavior. When the U.S. bishops tried to vote last week on new rules regarding bishops, designed to prevent another McCarrick-type scandal, the Vatican issued a last-minute directive telling them to not even take a vote.
The question lingering on many Catholics’ minds remains: What’s going to happen to McCarrick?
The Vatican remains silent on the answer.
“What I hear from the people of God who I’ve been listening to … the Archbishop McCarrick case has particularly upset them,” Bishop Robert Deeley of Maine told his fellow bishops in an emotional remark last week at the U.S. bishops’ meeting in Baltimore, where numerous bishops raised demands for more investigation into McCarrick. “What the people don’t understand is, this behavior must have been known, because people are saying that it was known. And how did these promotions happen? I think that’s where the problem, a lack of trust, is. [Parishioners are asking] ‘Can we trust you?’ ”
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