NEW YORK (CNS) – A front-page New York Times article published July 16 detailed the alleged abuse of two seminarians in the Diocese of Metuchen, N.J., by then-Bishop Theodore E. McCarrick in the 1980s that resulted in settlements to each man.

For one of the seminarians, the alleged abuse continued after he had been ordained to the priesthood.

The 3,100-word article, written by Laurie Goodstein and Sharon Otterman, said the bishop would invite seminarians to spend time with him on overnight trips away from the seminary, and then, in giving bedroom assignments, direct one of them to his bedroom, where there was just one bed.

The abuse of these two men, according to an interview with one of former priests by the Times and the examination of the second man’s file by the newspaper on the condition that he – now also a former priest – not be named, took place in the 1980s, while Bishop McCarrick served as first bishop of Metuchen and then as archbishop of Newark.

Ordained a priest for the New York Archdiocese in 1958, then-Father McCarrick was ordained an auxiliary bishop of New York in 1977. He was appointed the first bishop of Metuchen in 1981 and was named archbishop of Newark in 1986. He was installed as archbishop of Washington in 2001 and made a cardinal in that same year. He retired in 2006.

In a statement to The New York Times, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark said that he was “greatly disturbed by reports” that Cardinal McCarrick, his predecessor in Newark from 1986 to 2000, had “harassed seminarians and young clergy.”

Cardinal McCarrick, now 88, said in June that he would no longer exercise any public ministry “in obedience” to the Vatican after an allegation of abuse from 1971 was found “credible and substantiated.”