Ted is Dead

Former Cardinal and Archbishop of Washington Ted McCarrick, serial abuser, and a man who was the very embodiment of the Vatican II hierarchy, died today. He was a major influence in the election of Francis (for which he worked from the outside), until he was unmasked. The entire liberal hierarchy of the United States today is directly related to him. 

His influence is present in the Vatican even today -- for instance, his former secretary was one of the main promoters of a recent beatification, as revealed this week by The Economist.

McCarrick as a priest with one of his victims, James

James, one of his many victims, was baptized by McCarrick himself, and the then-priest was a very close friend of the  family -- Ted abused him later, repeatedly, as a 13-year-old boy: more details in the 2018 New York Times article.

We'll let these incredible quotes from this week's Economist article be McCarrick's obituary:

"Among the crowd of bishops, priests, politicians, administrators, monks, nuns, broadcasters and family members who attended the beatification of Carlo Acutis was Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, an urbane English priest in his late 60s. ...

"Figueiredo had moved to Assisi in 2020, shortly before the beatification. He had asked to transfer following an incident in which he drove into a pregnant solicitor’s car while inebriated (she escaped without serious injury). After pleading guilty to drink driving, he went through the 12 steps recommended by Alcoholics Anonymous, a programme of self-renewal that seemed, to him, to recall the spiritual exercises laid out by St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.

...

"Figueiredo told me more about his own story. He had always wanted to be a priest. Raised in Britain as the child of Goan Catholics, he joined a non-monastic order in his 20s and was sent to New Jersey to study. He was ordained by Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, a rising star in the Catholic firmament and a potent fundraiser with influence in Rome and Washington.

"In the 1990s, Figueiredo spent several months working as McCarrick’s secretary, and remained a loyal functionary after he was transferred to work in the Roman Curia, the government of the Catholic church, in the 2000s. 'I was [McCarrick’s] man in Rome,' he said.

"Around 2008, McCarrick asked Figueiredo to carry out an unusual task for him. Figueiredo was to translate and deliver a letter to the Vatican’s secretary of state, the most powerful official beneath the pope. In it, McCarrick wrote that though he had sometimes shared a bed with seminarians, any rumours of abuse were categorically untrue. 'I delivered it and thought nothing of it,' Figueiredo told me. 'Because I mean, it wasn’t my duty, you know what I’m saying? It was up to the Vatican to deal with it. What am I going to do?'

"McCarrick resigned in July 2018. In February 2019, a church investigation concluded that he had committed “crimes against the sixth commandment with adults and children”. Further allegations followed, mostly about his abuse of trainee priests. Shortly afterwards Figueiredo released correspondence showing how church officials failed to enforce a 2008 order constraining McCarrick’s activities. 'I would be part of the cover-up if I kept that correspondence to myself,' he told CBS news, though some questioned why he had not done so sooner. In 2020 a church report found that Pope John Paul II was among the Vatican officials who knew about allegations against McCarrick.

"McCarrick is one of the most senior perpetrators discovered in more than two decades of revelation about sexual abuse in the Catholic church. The scale of wrongdoing is hard to fathom. In the United States alone, about 4% of Catholic priests active between 1950 and 2002 are believed to have sexually abused children."