In the Vatican yesterday, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a statement (full text) announcing that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been “dismiss[ed] from the clerical state,” i.e. defrocked. McCarrick had already resigned from the College of Cardinals over allegations of past sexual misconduct. In laicizing McCarrick, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found him guilty of “solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.” Vatican News reported on the action against McCarrick. An analysis of the news Crux says in part:
The four dioceses in the U.S. in which McCarrick served over the course of his long career – New York; Metuchen, New Jersey; Newark; and Washington, D.C., are all conducting separate investigations, a result of the fact that a request by the leadership of the U.S. bishops’ conference for a Vatican-sponsored apostolic investigation was turned down by Francis.