When historical sex abuse in the Catholic Church in America became a national scandal in 2002, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was a powerful voice for change in the media with his calls for a “zero tolerance policy” against culpable clerics. From now on, the church’s response to clerical abuse should be “one strike and you’re out”, he said.
McCarrick would help to shape many of the church’s safeguarding policies in response to the crisis. Yet just when the Catholic Church in America might have thought the taint of scandal was receding, McCarrick himself was exposed as an abuser. He was suspended from priestly ministry in February 2019 and resigned as a cardinal — making him the most senior US cleric to be effectively defrocked.
A New York Times investigation in 2018 claimed that McCarrick’s dalliances with male seminarians had been an open secret in the church for decades. A Vatican investigation also found him guilty of the more serious crime of abusing minors. McCarrick was found to have molested a teenage altar boy in New York in 1971-72. He told his young victims to call him “Uncle Ted”.
The investigation found evidence that bishops knew of McCarrick’s activities, such as sharing a bed with seminarians. More than one gave the excuse that they were unsure that there was sexual contact. It also emerged that the church had made two financial settlements to people who had accused McCarrick of sexual assault while he was Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, in the 1980s.
McCarrick co-operated with the Vatican investigation and, while protesting his innocence, did not contest the findings. A canonical trial in 2019 found McCarrick guilty of “solicitation in the sacrament of confession”, sexual abuse of minors and adults, and the “aggravating factor of abuse of power”. He said: “I am sorry for the pain the person who brought the charges has gone through, as well as for the scandal such charges cause our people.”
In 2021 McCarrick was criminally charged with indecently assaulting a 16-year-old boy at a wedding in Massachusetts in 1974. He pleaded not guilty, claiming no recollection of the reported abuse.
McCarrick, who was first elevated to the rank of auxiliary bishop in 1977 and retired as Archbishop of Washington in 2006, had been a great asset to the church. Indeed, he was one of its most strident voices demanding social justice in the world, which gave him the opportunity to play on his working-class background and disdain the trappings of high ecclesiastical office. It was a trait he shared with the future Pope Francis; McCarrick was said to be a key mover behind the scenes promoting Cardinal Bergoglio’s election before the conclave in 2013.
Representing Pope John Paul II — with whom he had forged a friendship in 1976 when Karol Wojtyla, then a cardinal, came to New York — McCarrick visited war zones around the world, putting himself in danger to warn of large-scale human rights abuses. He was detained by Serbian nationalists in Bosnia in 1992, visited Rwanda after the genocide of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and led missions to China, Vietnam and Cuba, where freedom of religious conscience was compromised.
In 2000, Pope John Paul II appointed him Archbishop of Washington, and President Clinton presented him with the Eleanor Roosevelt award for human rights that same year. A year later the Pope made McCarrick a cardinal.
Described as a “genius at schmoozing”, McCarrick persuaded President George W Bush to commit substantial aid funding for the troubled, largely Catholic, central American country of El Salvador and won concessions for its people working illegally in the US. Using his access to the rich and powerful, including the Hearst family, he became one of the church’s most effective fundraisers. Over five years in Washington DC, he raised an estimated $185 million for diocesan projects.
McCarrick was also a pastoral support to the Democratic senator John Kerry, who would challenge Bush for the US presidency in 2004. Amid calls from conservative Catholics that Kerry be denied Communion because of his public support for abortion rights, McCarrick is said to have continued to allow Kerry to receive the sacrament.
At the same time, victims of McCarrick’s abuse were emerging. A Washington Post investigation in 2019 found that from 2001 McCarrick transferred more than $600,000 to Vatican officials, some of whom were involved in investigating complaints that had already been made against him.
Theodore Edgar McCarrick was born in 1930, in New York, an only child of Irish-American parents. His father, Theodore Egan McCarrick, was a ship’s captain who died of tuberculosis when Theodore was three. His mother, Margaret (née McLaughlin), went to work in a car factory in the Bronx.
An altar boy from a young age, Theodore was expelled from the Jesuit Xavier High School for playing truant. A friend of the family helped him to get a place at the Fordham Preparatory School where he flourished. He went on to Fordham University in the Bronx and then entered St Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers. Under the influence of Cardinal Francis Spellman, a friend of Jacqueline Kennedy, he learnt the delicate art of cultivating the rich and powerful. McCarrick was ordained in 1958.
A brilliant scholar who would reach fluency in French, Spanish, German and Italian, McCarrick studied for a master’s in social science at the Catholic University of America in Washington and completed a doctorate in sociology in 1963. From the mid-Sixties he ran a Catholic university in Puerto Rico. McCarrick later served as private secretary to Cardinal Terence Cooke, the Archbishop of New York. Bing Crosby became a friend.
He was elevated to the episcopacy in 1977 as auxiliary bishop of New York. In 1981 Pope John Paul II appointed him bishop of the diocese of Metuchen and five years later McCarrick became Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey’s most populous city. He stayed for 14 years, devising programmes for people with HIV/Aids. Vocations boomed in the diocese and McCarrick ordained some 200 priests.
After he retired as Archbishop of Washington in 2006, the seamier side of his life began to emerge. He would target young seminarians by organising weekends away where all the young men would share rooms. One of them would find themselves sharing with “Uncle Ted”, who would start pushing boundaries. “I trusted him, I confided in him, I admired him,” said Robert Ciolek, a former seminarian and one of his victims. “I couldn’t imagine that he would have anything other than my best interests in mind.”
McCarrick spent his final years in monasteries in the state of Kansas and then Missouri. As criminal proceedings rumbled on, his lawyers claimed that he was unfit to stand trial because his deteriorating cognitive state had severely impaired his memory and ability to retain information. In August 2023, the court announced that McCarrick would not stand trial. His victims received an apology from the church, but not from McCarrick.
Theodore McCarrick, former cardinal, was born on July 7, 1930. He died on April 3, 2025, aged 94
