Nancy Pelosi reportedly receives Communion at papal Mass

Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick arrives at Massachusetts’ Dedham District Courthouse for his arraignment, Sept. 3, 2021. / Andrew Bukuras/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 5, 2022 / 18:00 pm (CNA).

One of the more graphic sexual abuse lawsuits against former cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick is still pending in New Jersey after the parties recently failed to settle the nearly two-year-old case, court filings show.

The civil lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Newark in September 2020, accuses McCarrick of raping and sexually assaulting an unnamed adolescent boy on more than 50 occasions from 1985 to 1990.

The lawsuit also names the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen as defendants, alleging that they failed to protect the boy from McCarrick while he led those New Jersey dioceses. All the defendants deny the claims against them.

The parties met with a private mediator June 23 but were unable to settle the case, court records show.

“At this juncture, the parties do not believe that another settlement conference will be productive,” the plaintiff’s lawyers, Mark Lefkowitz and Kevin Mulhearn, wrote in a July 21 letter to U.S. District Court Evelyn Padin.

The lawyers revealed in the letter that the Newark Archdiocese has produced 172,734 pages of documents requested by the plaintiff’s legal team, which is still reviewing the records.

Depositions of McCarrick and the plaintiff, who is now in his late thirties, have taken place, the letter said. Other individuals have yet to be deposed.

McCarrick, 92, was dismissed from the clerical state by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation found him guilty of sexually assaulting minors and adults.

Dozens of alleged assaults

The New Jersey lawsuit is one of several civil complaints still pending against McCarrick.

The disgraced prelate also faces criminal prosecution in district court in Dedham, Massachusetts, for allegedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy in 1974.

In that case, McCarrick entered a not guilty plea in September 2021 to three counts of indecent assault and battery. Each charge carries up to five years in prison.

No trial date has been set in the criminal case. The next hearing date is Sept. 8, a spokesman for the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office told CNA Friday.

The New Jersey civil case involving the alleged rapes of an adolescent boy has received significant media attention due to the graphic nature of the allegations. The 108-page lawsuit also chronicles in detail McCarrick’s steady rise up the Catholic hierarchy, despite multiple warnings and complaints about his alleged predatory behavior toward minors, seminarians, and young priests.

According to the lawsuit, McCarrick was “deeply revered, respected, and highly trusted” by the plaintiff’s “extremely devout Catholic” parents and extended family.

“Plaintiff’s parents were thrilled that McCarrick, a high-ranking Catholic bishop whom they viewed as God’s emissary, had decided to single out their family (and their son) for special attention and could not even begin to imagine that McCarrick’s desires toward Plaintiff were sexual or predatory in nature,” the lawsuit states.

“They thus strongly encouraged Plaintiff to spend considerable time with McCarrick, as they viewed his actions toward Plaintiff as a blessed manifestation of God’s grace,” according to the complaint.

In 1985, while McCarrick was bishop of Metuchen, the then-12-year-old boy stayed overnight at the Metuchen rectory with his parents’ approval, the lawsuit states.

The next day, McCarrick took the boy to a beach house owned by the diocese in Sea Girt, New Jersey, where McCarrick sexually assaulted the boy for the first time, the lawsuit alleges.

Subsequent sexual assaults allegedly took place in a variety of other locations, including the rectory in Metuchen, a fishing cabin in the woods at the Eldred Preserve in the Catskills in New York State, and a hotel in Ireland, the lawsuit states.

The assaults continued when McCarrick became archbishop in Newark, the lawsuit states. In one incident alleged to have taken place at McCarrick’s private Newark residence, McCarrick brought another, unidentified priest to the apartment.

“This is my friend. He’s like us. We all do the same thing,” McCarrick allegedly told the then 13- or 14-year-old boy by way of introduction, according to the lawsuit. “I’m gonna leave now. And you two enjoy yourselves.”

The other priest then sexually assaulted and raped the boy, the lawsuit states. After the priest left, McCarrick raped the boy again, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit alleges that McCarrick’s alleged predatory behavior was known within the dioceses and spoken of at high levels of the Catholic Church, yet nothing was done to stop him, in part “because McCarrick was an exceptional fundraiser for the Catholic Church, and was charismatic and viewed by many as a rising star in the Church.”

The plaintiff had been a straight A student prior to McCarrick’s abuse, the lawsuit states.

“Upon suffering sexual abuse by McCarrick, however, Plaintiff’s grades slipped dramatically, as he was unable to concentrate, and his behavior at school worsened considerably,” the complaint alleges.

“Plaintiff attended three separate high schools, as he was expelled from several high schools for excessive fighting and general bad behavior. He became a wild, unruly child, prone to bursts of anger and untamed aggression, and frequently got into fights with other children (particularly when other boys touched him, as he hated physical contact with other males),” the lawsuit states.

The plaintiff never attended college and instead joined the U.S. Coast Guard, requesting to be stationed in Alaska “to separate himself from McCarrick and his nightmarish experiences to the greatest extent possible,” the lawsuit states.

Lawyers for McCarrick, the Archdiocese of Newark, and the Diocese of Metuchen could not be reached for comment Friday.

[…]

Vatican City, Nov 1, 2017 / 05:54 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis marked the feast of All Saints Day saying the saints are honored not because they were perfect or did everything right, but because they allowed God to touch their lives and fought hard against sin.

“The Solemnity of All Saints is ‘our’ feast: not because we are good, but because the holiness of God has touched our lives,” the Pope said Nov. 1.

Saints, he said, “are not perfect models, but are people whose lives God has crossed,” and can be compared with the stained glass windows of a church, “which allow light to enter in different shades of color.”

The Saints above all are our brothers and sisters “who have welcomed the light of God into their hears and have passed it on to the world, each one according to their own ‘tone’,” he said, but stressed that no matter the “color” they give, “all of them are transparent.”

“They have fought to take away the stains and darkness of sin, so as to let the gentle light of God pass through,” he said, adding that “this is the purpose of life, even for us.”

Pope Francis offered his reflection in an Angelus address marking the feast of All Saints Day, which the Church celebrates each year on Nov. 1. Since the solemnity is a national holiday in Italy and the Vatican, the Pope offered the special Angelus address, rather than giving his typical Wednesday general audience.

Pointing to the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew, in which Jesus outlines the Beatitudes, Francis said the world “blessed” with which Jesus begins his preaching is in itself an announcement of the “good news,” because it points to the path of happiness.

“Whoever is with Jesus is blessed, is happy,” he said, explaining that happiness “is not having something or becoming someone,” but rather, “true happiness is being with the Lord and living for love.”

The “ingredients” for a happy life, then, are what Jesus calls the beatitudes, he said, explaining that the blessed ones “are the simple, the humble who make room for God, who know how to weep for others and for their own errors, those who stay meek, who fight for justice, who are merciful toward all, who guard purity of heart, who always work for peace and remain in joy, not in hate, and, even when suffering, respond to evil with good.”

The beatitudes, then, are not “sensational acts” reserved only for “supermen,” but are attitudes for those who live through the trials and fatigues of everyday life.

Even the Saints are like this, he said, explaining that like everyone, “they breath the air polluted by the evil that’s in the world, but along the way they never lose sight of Jesus’ path, the one indicated in the beatitudes, which are like the map of Christian life.”

And the feast of All Saints, then, is not celebrated only in honor of those who have reached the “goal” this map leads to, but it is also for the many “simple and hidden people” who we may know, and who, through everyday holiness, help God to “carry the world forward.”

Francis highlighted the importance of the beatitude “blessed are the poor in spirit,” which he said does not mean living for success, power or money, since “whoever accumulates treasures for themselves is not rich before God.”

Rather, those who are poor in spirit believe that “the Lord is the treasure of life, and that love of neighbor is the only true source of income.”

“At times we are unhappy about something we lack or are worried whether or not we are though of as we would like (to be),” he said, and urged pilgrims to remember that true beatitude is not found in these things, but only “in the Lord and in love.”

Pope Francis closed his address pointing to a final “beatitude” that is not found in the Gospel, but in Chapter 14 of the Book of Revelation, which reads “blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth.”

Looking toward tomorrow’s celebration of All Souls Day, Francis said Christians pray for their departed loved ones, “so that they enjoy the Lord forever.”

After leading pilgrims in the traditional Angelus prayer, Pope Francis voiced his sorrow for the terrorist attacks that have taken place over the past week in Somalia, Afghanistan and New York, saying he is “deeply saddened” by the attacks.

“In deploring these acts of violence, I pray for the deceased, for the wounded and for their families,” he said, and prayed for the Lord to “convert the hearts of terrorists and free the world from hatred and the murderous folly that abuses the name of God so as to spread death.”

He noted how for tomorrow’s Nov. 2 feast of All Souls Day, he will visit the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno, where he will celebrate Mass to remember the faithfully departed, and how afterward he will stop at the Fosse Ardeantine Museum and memorial commemorating the site of a Nazi massacre during World War II.

Pope Francis asked that pilgrims and faithful accompany him in prayer as he remembers the victims of war and violence honored in the two locations.

“Wars do not produce anything other than cemeteries and death. This is why I wanted to offer this sign at a time when humanity seems to have not learned it’s lesson, or does not want to learn it,” he said, and asked for prayer.

[…]

A smoker in Leipzig, Germany. (Photo from 2018.) / Credit: Tobias Tullius / Unsplash (CC0))

CNA Newsroom, Apr 2, 2024 / 11:15 am (CNA).
While Germany legalized the recreational use of cannabis on Monday, April 1, the debate over the contentious… […]