Former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been defrocked by Pope Francis after Vatican officials found him guilty of sexual crimes against minors and adults, the Vatican said Saturday.
McCarrick was a powerful fundraiser in the church. He is the highest-ranking clergy to be laicized by the clerical state. The action strips McCarrick, 88, of priestly rights and bars him from celebrating Mass.
Hundreds of priests have been defrocked for sexual abuse, but laicizing someone of McCarrick's rank is an “almost revolutionary,” move for the church, Kurt Martens, a Catholic University of America canon law professor, told The New York Times.
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