Despite defrocking, the fat lady hasn’t yet sung on the McCarrick saga
ROME - For Theodore McCarrick, the other shoe finally dropped on Saturday as he was formally dismissed from the clerical state, or, to use the colloquial argot, “defrocked.” He was already an ex-cardinal; now, he’s also an ex-priest.
The verdict was expressed in a brief Vatican statement indicating that McCarrick had been found guilty of “solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.”
In July, Pope Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals after he’d been removed from ministry over a charge of sexually abusing a 16-year-old altar boy decades earlier while serving as a priest in New York, an allegation McCarrick denied.
Since then, at least two other charges of abuse of minors have surfaced, along with charges of sexual misconduct with adult seminarians and priests. All of that comes bundled with suggestions of abuse of power, since in virtually every case McCarrick held either direct or indirect authority over the other party.
https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2019/02/17/despite-defrocking-the-fat-lady-hasnt-yet-sung-on-the-mccarrick-saga/