Theodore McCarrick

Theodore Edgar McCarrick (July 7, 1930 – April 3, 2025) was an American Roman Catholic bishop and cardinal who was Archbishop of Newark from 1986 to 2000 and Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006. In 2019, McCarrick was defrocked by Pope Francis after being convicted of sexual misconduct in a canonical trial.

Ordained a priest in 1958, McCarrick became an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1977. He then became Bishop of Metuchen in 1981. From 1986 to 2000, he served as Archbishop of Newark. He was appointed Archbishop of Washington in 2000 and made a cardinal in 2001. A prolific fundraiser, he was connected to prominent politicians and was considered a power broker in Washington, D.C. After his mandatory age-related retirement from Washington in 2006, he continued traveling the globe on the unofficial behalf of Pope Francis. Within the church, McCarrick was generally regarded as a champion of progressive Catholics.

McCarrick was accused of engaging in sexual misconduct with adult male seminarians for decades. Multiple reports about McCarrick's alleged conduct with adult seminarians were made to American bishops and the Holy See, but McCarrick vehemently and explicitly denied the allegations to the Vatican. Pope Francis was reportedly unaware of allegations of McCarrick's sexual abuse against minors until 2018.

After a credible allegation of repeated sexual misconduct towards boys and seminarians was lodged with the Archdiocese of New York, McCarrick was removed from public ministry in 2018. The following month, The New York Times published a story detailing a pattern of sexual abuse of male seminarians and minors by McCarrick, leading him to resign from the College of Cardinals. After a church investigation and trial, McCarrick was found guilty of sexual crimes against adults and minors and abuse of power and dismissed from the clerical state in 2019. He was the most senior church official in modern times to be laicized, and his was the first known case of a cardinal resigning from the College of Cardinals and being laicized for sexual abuse. Several honors he had been awarded, such as honorary degrees, were rescinded.

McCarrick's case sparked demands for accountability and reform in the Catholic Church. Pope Francis ordered "a thorough study" of the Vatican's records on McCarrick "to ascertain all the relevant facts, to place them in their historical context and to evaluate them objectively", which was published by the Secretariat of State in 2020.

McCarrick lived at monasteries in Kansas and Missouri until his death in 2025.