Disgraced former cardinal McCarrick gave more than $600,000 in church funds to powerful clerics, records show

Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in church money to powerful Catholic clerics over nearly two decades, according to financial records obtained by The Washington Post, while the Vatican failed to act on claims he had sexually harassed young men.

Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in church money to powerful Catholic clerics over nearly two decades, according to financial records obtained by The Washington Post, while the Vatican failed to act on claims he had sexually harassed young men.

Starting in 2001, McCarrick sent checks totaling more than $600,000 to clerics in Rome and elsewhere, including Vatican bureaucrats, papal advisers and two popes, according to church ledgers and former church officials.

Several of the more than 100 recipients were directly involved in assessing misconduct claims against McCarrick, documents and interviews show. It was not until 2018 that McCarrick was removed from public ministry amid allegations of misconduct decades earlier with a 16-year-old altar boy, and this year he became the first cardinal known to be defrocked for sexual abuse.

The checks were drawn from a little-known account at the Archdiocese of Washington, where McCarrick began serving as archbishop in 2001. The “Archbishop’s Special Fund” enabled him to raise money from wealthy Catholic donors and to spend it as he chose, with little oversight, according to the former officials.

McCarrick sent Pope John Paul II $90,000 from 2001 to 2005. Pope Benedict XVI received $291,000, most of it a single check for $250,000 in May 2005, a mo...

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Showing 1 comment

  • Richard Kensinger, MSW
    commented 2019-12-27 09:53:05 -0600
    There are so many ways to buy silence, and money is one of the more powerful mechanisms.
    In PA a news report indicates that to date Dioceses have paid out $89M which does not include $21 M from the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, which initiated a fund in 1999 to buy silence from survivors via NDA’s. To date 52 of the 56 perps are clergy.
    I do not regret my “divorce” from the Church which is defiled. I continue my advocacy to hold AJD accountable for all its crimes.
    Rich

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