By Julie Zauzmer, Katherine Shaver and Maria Sacchetti, Acts of Faith, February 16, 2019<\/p>\n
For decades, he was one of the faces of the Catholic church, representing the Vatican all over the world \u2014 and nowhere more so than in Washington.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the former leader of Washington\u2019s Catholics became no longer Cardinal McCarrick, no longer Archbishop McCarrick, not even Rev. McCarrick. Just Theodore McCarrick, disgraced for sexually abusing minors and adults, and punished more severely than any Catholic cardinal ever has been for abuse.<\/p>\n
For the local church that he once led and where he was widely beloved, it was a stunning moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cJustice has been done, but healing will still have to go on in the church,\u201d said Patricia McGuire, the president of Washington\u2019s Trinity University. \u201cA lot of Catholics, including people in leadership positions like me, a lot of us feel so let down and disgusted. We\u2019re trying to find a way to pick ourselves up, faithful to the church but wary of who we\u2019re dealing with. I hate to say it, but I think it\u2019s blown a hole through the whole trust relationship. … If we can\u2019t count on religious leaders to be truthful and honest, who can we trust?\u201d<\/p>\n
Some area Catholics said they remain concerned about the length of time it took to finally bring McCarrick to justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s long overdue,\u201d said District resident Erin Cromer as she headed in to a midday mass at Saint Matthew\u2019s Cathedral in Northwest Washington. McCarrick formerly led major masses at the Cathedral and instituted a tradition of hanging a cardinal\u2019s wide-brimmed hat there after death. Had he not been defrocked, he would have been buried in the crypt at St. Matthew\u2019s. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t have taken this long when you have that much proof. It was a nice headline to see, but it just shouldn\u2019t have taken that long.\u201d<\/p>\n
[Ex-cardinal McCarrick defrocked by Vatican for sexual abuse<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n The Archdiocese of Washington has been dealt concussive blows in recent months. Less than a year ago, McCarrick \u2014 who led the archdiocese from 2001 to 2006 \u2014 was the aging and respected cardinal next door, when he wasn\u2019t traveling the world to represent the Vatican and occasionally the U.S. State Department in conflict zones. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who took over when McCarrick reached retirement age in 2006, was at the helm of an archdiocese thriving in many respects, with Mass attendance and Catholic school enrollment mostly unharmed by the downturn that has weakened other Catholic dioceses across the country.<\/p>\n Then McCarrick was removed from ministry, with the shocking allegation that he had abused a teenager nearly a half-century ago. More allegations swiftly followed: A Virginia man came forward to say that he too had been abused by McCarrick when he was a minor. The church admitted that it had secretly settled two lawsuits against McCarrick more than a decade ago, while McCarrick was still leading the Washington archdiocese, both from men who said McCarrick harassed them when they were seminarians or young priests.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Wuerl faced his own related scandals. A grand jury in Pennsylvania, in a report that inspired new criminal and civil investigations nationwide, found that more than 300 priests had abused children in the state \u2014 including in Pittsburgh during Wuerl\u2019s time as the bishop there. Washington Catholics protested outside Masses, condemning Wuerl for inconsistently handling priests who abused children under his watch in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n And while Wuerl repeatedly denied ever knowing about the rumors that McCarrick was harassing young men, The Washington Post learned <\/a>that he did know and had reported the sexual abuse allegations to the Vatican in 2004.<\/p>\n In October, pressured by the protests from his parishioners, Catholic schoolteachers and internally some of his priests, Wuerl retired early. Pope Francis still has not named his replacement, so Wuerl remains in charge of the archdiocese, presiding over ceremonial duties like the ornate Christmas Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Northeast Washington.<\/p>\n Four months after Wuerl announced his retirement, Catholic insiders are waiting with bated breath for the new archbishop to be named.<\/p>\n \u201cYou want the naming of the new person to be a turning of the page, starting a new chapter in the life of the church in Washington,\u201d said Catholic writer Michael Sean Winters. \u201cThe first thing is to heal whatever woundedness we\u2019re experiencing \u2014 first with his priests, second with the people in the pews. … This has struck them, especially those who really looked up to McCarrick.\u201d<\/p>\n The new archbishop, Winters said, will also have a prominent role by virtue of his job in addressing how the church handles such abuse in the future. \u201cThis new archbishop, who\u2019s going to have, it\u2019s safe to assume, a higher profile than wherever he is coming from, needs to use that creatively to look at how we disassemble the unhealthy parts of the clerical culture.\u201d<\/p>\n