By Catholic News Service
BOSTON (CNS) — The Boston Globe reported July 29 that police in the Boston suburb of Wellesley have charged former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 in a criminal complaint filed by Wellesley Police in a district court in nearby Dedham, Massachusetts.
A summons has been issued ordering McCarrick, now 91, to appear at the court for arraignment Aug. 26.
The Globe reported that McCarrick is now living in Missouri. The address listed for McCarrick in the court filings is the Vianney Renewal Center in Dittmer, Missouri, located in Jefferson County, a suburban county of St. Louis on the eastern side of the state.
The Vianney Renewal Center is a treatment center for Catholic clergy with sexual or other disorders.
According to its website, it’s a ministry coordinated by the Servants of the Paraclete, which collaborates with sponsoring diocesan and religious communities “to provide a safe and supportive environment for the rehabilitation and reconciliation of priests and religious brothers.”
The crimes for which McCarrick is charged allegedly took place in 1974, when he was a New York archdiocesan priest and secretary to Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York.
According to the Globe, the man told investigators that McCarrick was a family friend who began molesting him when he was a boy.
The man, whose name was not released, is represented by Mitchell Garabedian, long known as an attorney for those who have made abuse accusations against Catholic clergy.
Because McCarrick was not a Massachusetts resident and “the statute of limitations stopped running when he left the state,” the Globe said, “he can be charged with alleged assault dating to the 1970s.”
McCarrick’s attorney, Barry Coburn of Washington, told the Globe: “We will look forward to addressing this issue in the courtroom.”
In 2018, the prelate resigned from the College of Cardinals after The New York Times published a series of stories detailing abuse episodes by the then-priest and bishop during assignments in New York and New Jersey, principally in the 1970s and ’80s.
A year later, Pope Francis laicized him after a canonical process found him guilty.
Last year, the Vatican released its own report detailing the McCarrick case. The Vatican report said the now-disgraced former prelate was able to rise up the Catholic hierarchical structure based on personal contacts, protestations of his innocence and a lack of church officials reporting and investigating accusations made against him.
