Blogs
Featured Image
Cardinal Theodore McCarrickLisa Bourne / LifeSiteNews

Nov. 7, 2020 update: The Vatican said on Nov. 6 that the McCarrick report will be issued on Tuesday, Nov. 10, as reported by Reuters.

November 5, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Reuters reports today that, according to its own sources within the Vatican, the long-awaited McCarrick report on the history of Theodore McCarrick's misbehavior and the high-ranking cover-up or tolerance of it will be published before the Fall Meeting of the USCCB, November 15-19. LifeSite was told the same by several sources.

According to Reuters, this report is to be published ahead of the USCCB meeting and is the result of Pope Francis' order of “a thorough study of all documents in Holy See offices concerning McCarrick in 2018.” Catholic theologian and book author Dr. Taylor Marshall is also listing November 11 as the publication date for the report.

The four U.S. dioceses where he served – New York, Metuchen, Newark, and Washington, D.C. – had made their own investigations to contribute to the Vatican report, the report adds.

“There is great anticipation for the report,” Reuters continues, “because it may show how McCarrick managed to rise through the ranks even though his history of sexual misconduct with adult male seminarians was an open secret.”

According to LifeSite's own sources, the report is between 600 and 700 pages long with numerous footnotes. Some sources say the report could be published as early as November 10 or 11. One source pointed out that the report contains much meaningless material, that is to say, it is inflated. However, other sources told LifeSite that it could very well lead to a deep crisis in the Vatican since it might well mention many curial members who were involved in the cover-up or toleration of McCarrick's corruption and sexual misconduct over the course of many decades.

This latter point is seen by some observers in the context of Pope Francis' own curial reform. In a sense, when several key curial members are being weakened or humiliated for their misconduct with regard to McCarrick, less members of the Curia might resist when Pope Francis is about to implement a revolutionary curial reform with for example the weakening of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Until today, the CDF has repeatedly shown the willingness still to defend Catholic doctrine, for example when recently rebuking German bishops for promoting intercommunion. This might well change after Pope Francis' curial reform.

So, while we all await the truth about the history of the McCarrick cover-up, we might also be aware that this upcoming report might be also used for other purposes.

Whether the upcoming report will reveal the full truth remains to be seen. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò reported in August of 2018 that he personally informed Pope Francis about the sanctions placed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI, something that took place in person, and not in a written form. However, Pope Francis and his ignoring of this warning might very well not be mentioned at all in this report.

Pope Francis had repeatedly called upon McCarrick to help him with international missions, such as with China and Cuba, thereby ignoring the sanctions placed on McCarrick.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in his now-famous McCarrick testimony, had named multiple high-ranking Vatican prelates as being complicit in the cover-up of McCarrick's misdeeds, among them Cardinals Tarcisio Bertone, Angelo Sodano, and Pietro Parolin.

Theodore McCarrick was laicized in Feb. of 2019, after there came reports of his having sexually abused minors. He now lives in an undisclosed location.

In a recently published interview book written by Dr. Robert Moynihan, Finding Viganò, Archbishop Viganò reports how he had confronted McCarrick with his misdeeds when he became the papal nuncio in Washington, D.C. McCarrick then admitted to him his fault.

As Archbishop Viganò told LifeSite, McCarrick “recognized that he did something wrong, but he was absolutely diminishing the gravity of his acts and did not feel or show any sense of repentance. It was somehow as if he thought his behavior was something normal.”

Viganó, when speaking to Dr. Robert Moynihan about this matter, was deeply moved and felt compassion toward McCarrick.

Featured Image

Dr. Maike Hickson was born and raised in Germany. She holds a PhD from the University of Hannover, Germany, after having written in Switzerland her doctoral dissertation on the history of Swiss intellectuals before and during World War II. She now lives in the U.S. and is married to Dr. Robert Hickson, and they have been blessed with two beautiful children. She is a happy housewife who likes to write articles when time permits.

Dr. Hickson published in 2014 a Festschrift, a collection of some thirty essays written by thoughtful authors in honor of her husband upon his 70th birthday, which is entitled A Catholic Witness in Our Time.

Hickson has closely followed the papacy of Pope Francis and the developments in the Catholic Church in Germany, and she has been writing articles on religion and politics for U.S. and European publications and websites such as LifeSiteNews, OnePeterFive, The Wanderer, Rorate Caeli, Catholicism.org, Catholic Family News, Christian Order, Notizie Pro-Vita, Corrispondenza Romana, Katholisches.info, Der Dreizehnte,  Zeit-Fragen, and Westfalen-Blatt.