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 dismissed and laicized 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 denied the allegations to the Vatican. 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. 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.

An only child, McCarrick was born on July 7, 1930, into an Irish American family in New York City to Theodore E. and Margaret T. (née McLaughlin) McCarrick. His father was a ship captain who died from tuberculosis when McCarrick was three years old, and his mother then worked at an automobile parts factory in The Bronx. As a child, McCarrick served as an altar boy at the Church of the Incarnation in Washington Heights.

He was expelled from the Jesuit Xavier High School in his junior year for missing classes. McCarrick missed an academic year due to the expulsion, but a family friend was able to help get him into the Jesuit Fordham Preparatory School. At Fordham, he was elected student council president and served in the ROTC program for the United States Air Force. McCarrick studied in Switzerland for a year before returning to the United States and attending Fordham University. McCarrick later entered St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, from where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy (1954) and a Master of Arts in theology (1958). McCarrick was a polyglot, speaking five languages (English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish).

McCarrick was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Francis Spellman, Archbishop of New York, on May 31, 1958. From 1958 to 1963, he furthered his studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., earning a PhD in sociology. He then served as an assistant chaplain at the Catholic University, becoming dean of students and director of development.

McCarrick served as president of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico from 1965 to 1969, and was given the honorary title of Domestic Prelate of His Holiness in 1965. While president, he was one of the authors of the Land O'Lakes Statement in 1967. In 1969, Cardinal Terence Cooke recalled McCarrick to New York. McCarrick was an associate secretary for education and an assistant priest at Blessed Sacrament parish from 1969 to 1971. He was Cooke's secretary from 1971 to 1977. He was later accused of sexually abusing a male minor during this period.