Denver Newsroom, Nov 10, 2020 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- An undercover KGB agent tried to befriend ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick in the early 1980s, prompting the FBI to ask the rising churchman to exploit this connection to counter Soviet intelligence, according to claims in the Vatican’s report on McCarrick released Tuesday.
The Nov. 10 McCarrick Report offers detail on McCarrick’s church career and the sexual abuse his successful personality helped to conceal.
“In the early 1980s, a KGB agent who enjoyed diplomatic cover as the Deputy Chief of Mission to the United Nations for the Soviet Union approached McCarrick, apparently to attempt to befriend him,” said the report, released by the Vatican Nov. 10. “McCarrick, who was initially unaware that the diplomat was also a KGB agent, was contacted by agents of the FBI, who asked him to serve as a counterintelligence asset with respect to the activities of the KGB.”
“Though McCarrick believed it was best to decline such involvement (particularly because he was immersed in the organization of the new Diocese of Metuchen), the FBI persisted, contacting McCarrick again and encouraging him to allow a relationship with the KGB agent to develop,” the report continued.
McCarrick had been an auxiliary bishop of New York City from, and became the first bishop of the newly created Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey in 1981. He would become Archbishop of Newark in 1986, then Archbishop of Washington in 2001.
In January 1985, McCarrick reported the FBI’s request “in detail” to Apostolic Nuncio Pio Laghi, seeking the nuncio’s advice.
“Laghi thought that McCarrick should ‘not be negative’ about the possibility of serving as an FBI asset and described McCarrick in an internal note as someone who ‘knows how to deal with these people and be cautious’ and who was ‘wise enough to understand and not be caught’,” said the report.
The compilers of the McCarrick Report say the rest of the story is not known to them.
“It is not clear, however, whether McCarrick ultimately accepted the FBI’s proposal, and no record reflects further contact with the KGB agent,” said the report.
Former FBI director Louis Freeh said in an interview cited in the report that he was not personally familiar with the incident. However, he said that McCarrick would have been “a very high value target for any of the (intelligence) services, but particularly the Russians at that time.”
The McCarrick Report cites Freeh’s 2005 book, “My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Waging War on Terror,” in which he described Cardinal John O’Connor’s “great efforts, prayers and real help to dozens of FBI agents and their families—especially to me.”
“Later, Cardinals McCarrick and Law continued this special ministry to the FBI family, who revered both of them,” Freeh’s book said, referring to former Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law.
In the Cold War era, prominent Catholic leaders in the U.S. tended to strongly back the FBI for its work against communism. Cardinal Francis Spellman, who ordained McCarrick to the priesthood in 1958, was a well-known supporter of the FBI, as was Archbishop Fulton Sheen, whom McCarrick came to know after Sheen’s 1969 retirement from the Diocese of Syracuse.
Years after McCarrick’s encounter with the KGB agent and the FBI request for assistance, McCarrick would refer to the FBI anonymous letters which alleged he was engaging in sexual misconduct. He denied these accusations, though his victims who later came forward have indicated he was sexually abusing boys and young men as early as 1970, as a priest of the New York archdiocese.
The McCarrick Report indicates that McCarrick would emphatically deny the allegations, while seeking law enforcement help to respond to them.
In 1992 and 1993 an unknown author or authors circulated anonymous letters to leading Catholic bishops accusing McCarrick of sexual abuse. The letters did not name specific victims or present any knowledge of a specific incident, though they suggested his “nephews”–young men McCarrick frequently singled out for special treatment–were potential victims, the McCarrick Report states.
An anonymous letter sent to Cardinal O’Connor, dated Nov. 1, 1992, postmarked from Newark and addressed to National Conference of Catholic Bishops members, claimed imminent scandal from McCarrick’s misconduct, which it alleged was “common knowledge in clerical and religious circles for years.” The letter claimed that civil charges of “pedophilia or incest” were imminent regarding McCarrick’s “overnight guests.”
After O’Connor sent the letter to McCarrick, McCarrick indicated he was investigating.
“You might want to know that I have shared (the letter) with some of our friends in the FBI to see if we can find out who is writing it,” McCarrick said to O’Connor in a Nov. 21, 1992 response. “I am afraid he is a sick person and someone who has a lot of hate in his heart.”
A Newark-postmarked anonymous letter, dated Feb. 24, 1993 and sent to O’Connor, accused McCarrick of being a “cunning pedophile,” without naming specifics, and also claiming that this had been known for decades by “authorities here and in Rome.”
In a March 15, 1993 letter to O’Connor, McCarrick again cited his consultations with law enforcement.
“When the first letter arrived, after discussion with my vicars general and auxiliary bishops, we shared it with our friends in the FBI and local police,” McCarrick said. “They predicted that the writer would strike again and that he or she was someone whom I may have offended or crossed in some way but someone probably known to us. The second letter clearly supports that supposition.”
The same day, McCarrick wrote to Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, saying anonymous letters were “attacking my reputation.”
“These letters, which presumably are written by the same person, are unsigned and obviously very annoying,” he said. “On each occasion, I have shared them with my auxiliary bishops and vicars general and with our friends in the FBI and the local police.”
The McCarrick Report said that the anonymous letters “appear to have been viewed as libelous attacks made for improper political or personal motives” and did not result in any investigation.
When Pope John Paul II was considering whether to name McCarrick as Archbishop of Washington, Cacciavillan considered McCarrick’s report about the accusations to be a point in McCarrick’s favor. He specifically cited the Nov. 21, 1992 letter to O’Connor.
By 1999, Cardinal O’Connor had come to believe McCarrick might be guilty of some kind of misconduct. He asked Pope John Paul II not to name McCarrick as O’Connor’s successor in New York, citing allegations that McCarrick shared beds with seminarians, among other rumors and allegations.
The report depicts McCarrick as an ambitious workaholic and a cunning personality, at ease in circles of influence and establishing contacts with political and religious leaders. He spoke several languages and would serve on delegations for the Vatican, the U.S. State Department, and NGOs. He would at times accompany Pope John Paul II during his travels.
The new Vatican report indicates McCarrick’s networking included many law enforcement officials.
“During his time as ordinary of the Archdiocese of Newark, McCarrick made numerous contacts in state and federal law enforcement,” said the Vatican report. Thomas E. Durkin, described as McCarrick’s “well-connected New Jersey attorney,” helped McCarrick meet the leaders of the New Jersey State Troopers and the head of the FBI in New Jersey.
A priest who formerly served as a New Jersey police officer said McCarrick’s relationship “was not atypical since relations between the Archdiocese and Newark police have historically been close and cooperative.” McCarrick himself was “comfortable among law enforcement,” according to the McCarrick report, which said his uncle was a captain in his police department and later headed a police academy.
As for McCarrick’s encounter with a KGB agent undercover at the United Nations, the story is just one of many provocative incidents involving the influential churchman.
Monsignor Dominic Bottino, a priest of the Diocese of Camden, described an incident at a catering hall in Newark in January 1990 in which McCarrick appeared to ask his help in obtaining privileged information about bishops’ appointments in the U.S.
Camden’s then-new Bishop James T. McHugh, then-Auxiliary Bishop John Mortimer Smith of Newark, McCarrick, and a young priest whose name Bottino could not recall attended a small dinner in celebration of McCarrick’s consecration of Smith and McHugh as bishops. Bottino was surprised to learn that he had been selected to become an attache at the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations.
McCarrick, who appeared to have become inebriated from drinking, told Bottino that the Holy See’s Permanent Observer mission’s diplomatic pouch regularly contained episcopal appointments for U.S. dioceses.
“Placing his hand on Bottino’s arm, McCarrick asked whether he could ‘count on’ Bottino once he became the attaché to provide him with information from the pouch,” the Vatican report said. “After Bottino stated that it would seem that the material in the pouch needed to remain confidential, McCarrick patted his arm and replied, ‘You’re good. But I think I can count on you’.”
Not long after this exchange, Bottino said, he witnessed McCarrick grope the crotch area of the young priest sitting next to him at the dinner table. The young priest appeared “paralyzed” and “terrified.” McHugh then abruptly stood up “in a sort of panic” and said he and Bottino had to leave, perhaps only 20 minutes after their arrival
There is no evidence that Smith or McHugh reported the incident to any Holy See official, including the apostolic nuncio.
[…]
Nothing appears set in stone to this Jesuit. Where does he get his inspirations? Perhaps Tucho should sit down with him for a bit of probing.
Look. Let’s be honest.
If Rupnik is acceptable priestly material — as Bergoglio’s acquiescence indicates he clearly is— then who isn’t?
Women? I say, bring ‘em on!
Illegal immigrants? Why not?
High school dropouts? Home remodeling contractors? Attorneys? Professional sports figures?
On what basis can we say no to anyone, so long as Rupnik remains a clergyman in good standing?
And, thus, Hollerich’s and Bergoglio’s ‘New Catholique Church’ lurches inexorably — indeed, progressively — into its post-Christian future.
I.e., the past.
Briney. There you go again. Dispagaging women. “Women? I say, bring ‘em on!
Illegal immigrants? Why not?”. Holy Catholic women??? Walk in their shoes!
He wasn’t disparaging women. Clue in.
More code language of gradualism from the clericalist Hollerich!
The contrived question before the study groups and the Synod is about female deacons. But, Hollerich, in counseling small steps, already maneuvers much more broadly. Says he: “…we will also work toward this. I don’t know if that necessarily has to include ordination to the priesthood. You can’t tie everything to the priesthood alone. That would be clericalization.”
The endgame of a female priesthood already waiting in the wing?
Such that the cover story for ordained deaconesses, itself, is the small-step already—on the path to an equally invalid female “priesthood”? Two points of clarification:
FIRST, the historical documentation does support an ordained role for so-called deaconesses. Instead, the ordained diaconate is an integral part of the threefold ordination established by Jesus Christ: bishops and priests, and their deacons. It’s neither culturally based nor separable. Moreover, the role of Lay Ecclesial Ministers exists already (!), by virtue of their baptism and confirmation.
SECOND, in his view of things male and female, why does the perplexed Hollerich remind us of the Anglican chauvinist cleric in the movie “Shadowlands”? The clericalist explains menfolk as intelligent versus womenfolk as only emotional. The “feeling” thingy…
As he dialogues (!) with C.S. Lewis’ new American friend, Joy Gresham (played by Debra Winger), Gresham first allows that different cultures might “have different manners of discourse”—and then wonders aloud: “Are you trying to be offensive, or merely stupid?”
Hollerich’s patronizing theology: “I am in favor of women feeling [!] fully equal in the Church.”
said the prohibition against ordaining women was “not an infallible doctrinal decision” and could be changed over time with arguments.(sic)
Incorrect, Jean-Claude, you goofy Jesuit.
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.
Guess what? Scratch below the surface and so often you’ll find homosexuality.
Lay men and women are completely equal in the Church. Laywomen and laymen have the exact same rights and can be involved in as much as any layman can. This is so tiresome. If he’s talking power…well that isn’t what ordination is about.
Can you imagine how much worse the Church would be if the contraceptive theology of this pontificate had come immediately after St. Paul VI? The pontificates of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI providentially provided a post-Vatican II floor to build the Church back up after the category 5 hurricane Francis.
Praise be Jesus Christ, now and forever! This too shall pass. “Hold fast” to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Body of Christ!
Let the Church decide.
It already has
Why do women need to be priest? Some of my women friends want so badly to have the Catholic Church to allow women priest. My women friends believe this will give women power and a say in the Church. Our Mother Mary had little say in the Gospels, yet she was exalted to Queen of Heaven and assumed into Heaven.
As Hollerich said, “When sneaking up on dose cwafty infawwible teachings, you must be vewy vewy quailfuwl.”
Gradualism, or precarious careening? As we struggle with what is the Church to become after Fiducia Supplicans, we awaken to the spectacular reality of an occultist priest, serial rapist of nuns protected by His Holiness afforded all the faculties and respect of a priest in good standing.
Female priests and John Paul’s formal declaration that they cannot be priests?Simply clericalist formality from an age locked into static conceptualizations of the Church. Francis is the new age. Hollerich the court jester entertaining His Holiness with naive suggestions apparently already affixed in our Pope’s supple ever inventive intellect. “You have to be open to everything. The Church is like that: Everyone, everyone, everyone”, His Holiness in response to Norah O’Donnell’s 60 Minutes interview subtly inserting everything. Our Pontiff cannot jettison tradition and literally replace Christ by inferring everything to himself.
These wonderful modernizers, imagining change will bring in new market shares of consumers and better support for their own retirements, miss one crucial point every time…
If the Church has been wrong about something for 2000yrs, and only now discovers the mistake, then how can it be right about anything? If its infallible teachings are now judged fallible, did it get anything right at all, to include the resurrection, and how can one know?
Why would anyone believe anything it teaches when it likely then all a farce?
Roma locuta est; causa finita est.
Good exorcism session of Msgr Rossetti – that also mentions how wounding words and such can lead persons to make (negative ) ‘inner vows ‘ – how one would not love/ trust etc: and how to break such – (at the 1.36 mark , for those short on time )
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB8uzH582Z8
Such negative inner vows against The Cross/ suffering or parental figures, as the urge /decision to destroy – Papacy ,The Church, own identity / each other in wrong choices – the discords and issues !
Good marriage preparation along with sessions such as above, to help families to discern these areas , spouses making good inner vows – such as in critical areas of chastity , to help restore dignity of women – all such to add to the help needed in our times ! Mercy !
I have had concerns with women clerics. However, my research and dialog with the CWR editor has caused further dilemma.
Excerpts: John Paul II’s rejection of the priesthood of women was binding for the Church. St. John Paul did not explain why the church is “bound”. Why does anyone care? The edict has been “cast in concrete”. Cardinal Hollerich… Citing the example of blessing homosexual unions after Fiducia Supplicans, Hollerich warned of a potentially “HUGE BACKLASH” if the Vatican were to introduce the ordination of women to the priesthood.
Amazing! Comparing homosexual marriage to women ordination is an abomination.
All that I have read on female ordination has been founded largely in mythology… Holy mother church is female, so women can’t be included. Jesus chose only males as his apostles.
Just what would ordained women offer to the church?
CNA: Church definitively said “no” to priestly ordination for women in the 1970s, they closed the door to half of the population of the Church. St. Augustine said that the soul does not have a sex. How can the church not be anti-women…if women are not part of the decision making? (Magesterium)
Was Christ, a Rabbi, concernned with the status of holy women? Would he accept today’s female rabbinical?
Lets not forget women are the most loved and productive nurturers of MANKIND. Today’s plagued male clerics, priest pedophilia, have placed many other ordained under scrutiny. A fresh air infusion of holy women must help a church in visible decline.
“St. John Paul did not explain why the church is “bound”.”
Good grief. Read the actual document. It’s shorter than most of your comments here.
Carl. No, the read of Pope Paul’s words are many and the complexity, “Declaration Inter Insigniores” may confuse the average uninitiated Catholic. And, I see his reason for not ordaining still what I observed in my earlier readings. There may have been a condition for men only… Wijngaard Institute for Catholic research: “the decision by the Swedish Lutheran Church in September of that year to admit women to the pastoral office. This caused a sensation and occasioned numerous commentaries”.
Pope Paul: “the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone”. That translates into the exclusion of 1/2 of the Catholic population. “God’s plan”? Cardinal Hollerich says there will be a BACKLASH in the church if women are ordained. He did not elaborate on WHOM the backlashers are. A bunch of old men?
No question the Church has made many changes to allow women more power. However, I would give a high mark of BLAND.
Thank you for your guidance.
I’ll sum it for you: “Jesus said and did it, we believe and follow it.”
Now, there are a host of theological reasons. An excellent guide is Women in the Priesthood? A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the Order of Creation and Redemption (Ignatius Press) by Manfred Hauke.
By the way, should I, as a man, be angry that God only “allows” women to bear and have children?
“God said it, I believe it & that settles it for me…”
🙂
Does it mean anything that the Redeemer assumed human nature as a male? After all, God could have assumed human nature as a woman. God didn’t. Are you upset about that? Perhaps it has a significance that’s eluded you.
Peeling an onion, layer by layer, results in No Onion ; the Marxist Deconstructivism of the McCarrick Legacy Band must be stopped while there is still an onion to be saved.
‘At the same time, the Jesuit cautioned against pushing too hard for changes, noting that “if you push too much, you won’t achieve much. You have to be cautious, take one step at a time, and then you might be able to go very far.”’ The cardinal could not have spoken more clearly the progressive manifesto! That has to be one of the most eye-opening statements of a left-wing prelate. “Dialogue” has nothing to do with the path of reason and faith toward the attainment of the truth, but with the slow and steady approach toward a present and predisposed, misshapen, human desire.
Pushing for female priesthood means those who do so put themselves above Christ, the reality of His presence in the Eucharist and also the reality of the Last Supper here and now.
Jesus Christ is a Man; each Eucharist is the Last Supper; a priest is an icon of Christ Who is a Man hence he can only be a man. A female priest conveys a lie and the Church cannot accept that lie. This is enough to end the calls for “a dialogue” (sounds like a dialogue with oneself is envisaged here and this is probably it is endless).
Speaking of “empowering women”. The most exalted service typically does not have any power. I mean not an earthly understanding of “a power” which the proponents of female priesthood seem to employ. For example, a prophet has no earthly power and no recognition but he has plentiful rejection and hatred and often a violent death. Yet a prophetic vocation is one of the most exalted in the Church. God can choose a woman for this vocation and the examples are abundant. The truth is that the power which is given to a person by God is very different from that power that proponents of a female ordination speak about. They appear to speak of a power given by men – more precisely, by themselves.
And so, any woman (or a man) right now can prophecy and chastise priests including the Bishops and Popes – if God calls them to do so. A woman can write theology, teach, be a spiritual director, even be (in an Orthodox tradition) “a spiritual mother”, even to a Patriarch. A woman can only not be a priest because God didn’t give her a power to do so – just like He did not give men a power to fall pregnant and to give birth.
Hence, I perceive those “dialogues” – about anything really – to be the attempt to swap God-given power with man-given power, in essence to usurp God’s ability to bestow a power upon those He chooses. I.e., narcissism again.
Women cannot be ordained. MorganD is wrong. The Catholic Church, unlike the protestant faiths, doesn’t change to keep aligned with the current world view on homosexuality, and women “priests”. Sorry to break MorganD’s heart, but a few days ago on that CBS 60 minutes interview, Pope Francis reaffirmed that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood or the diaconate.
This is not discrimination against women. This is preserving divine law, while giving women the opportunity to respectfully admire the office of priesthood, which is reserved for chaste, straight men who are acting In Persona Christi.
“while giving women the opportunity to respectfully admire the office of priesthood”
I don’t think Our Lord would say to St Mary Magdalene: “Via choosing males for priesthood I am giving you an opportunity to admire the office of priesthood” because it sounds condescending and… meaningless. Our Lord would simply say as a matter of fact “priesthood is for men only”, that is it.
Curiously, your phrase omits men. Let’s be equal here and say “while giving men and women the opportunity to respectfully admire the office of priesthood”. Or even better “the office of priesthood is worthy of respect”. But, if it is universally (i.e. by men and woman alike) worthy of respect, there can be no such a thing as “giving women the opportunity to respectfully admire the office of priesthood”.
Thanks for pointing that out Anna. Yes, everyone should respect the office of priesthood, both male and female. Looking back over my comment, I also realized that preserving the male priesthood hopefully will give both men and women the opportunity to witness what a pure, honest man is, and take his (and Christ’s) example as you’re living out your own vocation. Also I like your comment above my old one. This constant push for a female priesthood is ridiculously futile. God bless. ☦️
Jesus Christ served and suffered humiliations. He died a painful death but rose again. A desire to humbly serve as Christ did is a noble intention. A genuine aspiration to be Christ-like deserves careful and utmost attention.
And this comment relates specifically and directly to the content of the article how?
The greatest and most perfect human person ever created by God is a woman. She is a singularity. For a time, even God Himself was her unborn Child!
“Hail, O Lady, Holy Queen, God’s Holy Mother Mary! You have been made the Virgin Church and chosen by the most Holy Father in heaven.
You has he consecrated with His most holy beloved Son and the Holy Spirit the Paraclete.
In You there has been, and is, all fullness of Grace, and all that is good.
Hail His Palace! Hail His Tabernacle! Hail His Dwelling Place! Hail His Garment! Hail His Handmaid! Hail His Mother!
And (hail) all you holy Virtues [in her] which by the grace and enlightenment of the Holy Spirit are poured forth into the hearts of the faithful, that from faithless souls you virtues may make them faithful to God!”
The Salutation to Our Lady by St. Francis of Assisi