Ex-Cardinal McCarrick charged with sexual assault of teen

Ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was charged Wednesday with sexually assaulting a teenage boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts in the 1970s, according to The Boston Globe.

The former archbishop of Washington, D.C., allegedly told the boy that he “needed to go to confession” and led him into a room, where he assaulted him, the boy told police.

McCarrick had already been facing a number of sexual assault lawsuits in New York and New Jersey, where he once served as the archbishop of Newark. He first faced allegations of sexual abuse in 2018, after which the Vatican removed him from public ministry.

Pope Francis then defrocked McCarrick in 2019 after an investigation found him guilty of sexually abusing minors and adult seminarians over a decades-long period. 

McCarrick had previously been an influential cardinal who held a number of elite positions within the U.S. Catholic Church before taking on the position as archbishop in D.C. The Boston Globe noted that McCarrick is the highest-ranking Catholic official in the U.S. to face criminal charges for sexual abuse.