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Wednesday, August 1st, 2018

U.S. cardinal steps down amid mushrooming sex abuse scandal

Author:     Philip Pullella
Source:     Thomson Reuters Foundation
Publication Date:     Saturday, 28 July 2018 13:14 GMT
 Link: U.S. cardinal steps down amid mushrooming sex abuse scandal
Stephan:   For several days I have been holding a series of stories and reports on the cancer of sex abuse that is literally bankrupting the Roman Catholic Church. I don't have the space for all of them, so I have chosen the following three as representative of the whole. What is clear is that the Roman church has a fourth-stage cancer eating it from within. I have to say that if I were a Catholic parent with young children, particularly a young son, I would never leave my child alone with my priest, or any priest. I am not sure how one reconciles that with one's faith, but I guess that's the challenge facing every Catholic parent.

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick testifying on sex abuse of children

VATICAN CITY, July 28 (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Saturday accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, one of the U.S. Catholic Church’s most prominent figures who has been at the centre of a widening sexual abuse scandal.

McCarrick, 88, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., is the first cardinal in living memory to lose his red hat and title. Other cardinals who have been disciplined in sexual abuse scandals kept their membership in the College of Cardinals and their honorific “your eminence”.

The allegations against McCarrick, which first surfaced publicly last month, came with Francis facing an image crisis on a second front, in Chile, where a growing abuse scandal has enveloped the Church in the Latin American country.

A Vatican statement said the pope ordered McCarrick’s suspension from the exercise of any public ministry. This means he remains a priest but will be allowed to say Mass only in private.

Francis also ordered McCarrick to go into seclusion “for a life of prayer and penance until the accusations […]

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