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Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the famous American cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 88 years old, already banned from exercising his ministry after accusations of badual abuse in the United States, the Holy See announced in a statement Saturday.
"The Holy Father received the letter in which Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus Washington (USA) resigned as a member of the College of Cardinals, "the statement said.
" Pope Francis accepts this resignation from the College of Cardinals and ordered his suspension from any public ministry, with the obligation to remain in a house, which is still to be indicated to him, to lead a life of prayer and repentance until the charges against him are examined in the part of a normal canonical process ", adds the text.
Cardinal McCarrick, a priest who was promoted to bishop and archbishop in the Archdiocese of New York before leaving for Washington in 2001, was one of the most prominent American cardinals internationally.
Although officially retired, he continued to travel, particularly to defend human rights issues. He had been particularly in the forefront of demanding reforms to crack down on pedophile priests in the United States.
In a statement issued on June 20, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York had explained that his diocese had received allegations about alleged abuse of Cardinal McCarrick dating back to "almost 45 years".
In accordance with the Charter on the Protection of Children, adopted in 2002 by the American bishops after the pedophile scandal that rocked the diocese of Boston, "an independent agency" conducted an investigation, the results of which were transmitted to a commission that found the accusations "credible and substantiated," said Cardinal Dolan.
Theodore McCarrick, "while maintaining his innocence, accepts this decision," Cardinal Dolan also said, pointing out that the Vatican had asked the suspected cardinal to "no longer publicly exercise his ministry".
According to the American Catholic website Crux, a man accused the priest of badually abusing him in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, when he was 16 in the early 1970s.
Extremely rare decision –
While waiting for a Vatican trial, which could exclude him from the Church, Theodore McCarrick remains a priest.
The abandonment of the cardinal's supreme title is, however, almost a first. The only other case, vaticanists, dates back to 1927, when Pope Pius XI accepted the resignation of French Cardinal Lois Billot (who had renounced himself to his purple toque for political reasons).
In March In 2015, Pope Francis accepted the renunciation of the cardinal prerogatives of Bishop Keith O'Brien, a former Archbishop of Edinburgh who resigned two years earlier after being the subject of complaints by young priests for "improper acts" in In the 1980s, however, Bishop O'Brien had retained his cardinal title until his death last March.
Cardinals act as advisers to the pope and may participate in a conclave to elect a new pontiff if they are under 80 years of age.
Several cardinals are currently in the crosshairs of their country's criminal justice system, including the Vatican's number one, the Australian George Pell, who is facing trial on charges of past badual badault.
The archbishop of Santiago, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, was summoned on Tuesday by the regional prosecutor of Rancagua (central Chile) to respond, on August 21, to accusations of concealment of badual abuse perpetrated by the Chilean clergy.
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