A VATICAN investigation into disgraced former US cardinal Theodore McCarrick has found that a series of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports of his sex abuse.
The two-year inquiry, whose 400-page report was published by the Vatican yesterday, also determined that Pope Francis had continued with his predecessors' handling of McCarrick until a former altar boy alleged abuse.
Allegations around McCarrick (90) intensified during Pope Francis's visit to Ireland in August 2018.
Early on the last day of the trip, a letter from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former papal nuncio to the US, alleged that Pope Francis was among a circle of high-ranking clerics who knew of the allegations against McCarrick but ignored them.
Despite the Vatican having reports about McCarrick's behaviour from as early as 1999, he was repeatedly promoted and rose to become a highly influential figure in the Catholic Church's 'soft diplomacy' effort in the US.
Pope John Paul II receives the most criticism in the report. He appointed McCarrick as Archbishop of Washington, D.C. in 2000 - despite having commissioned an inquiry that found he slept with seminarians.
It appears John Paul II was convinced by a handwritten denial sent to him by McCarrick.
Later, Pope Benedict XVI placed informal restrictions on McCarrick but the then-cardinal repeatedly flouted these - something a series of bishops were aware of. They are accused of failing to keep the Vatican properly informed about McCarrick's conduct.
The report says that Pope Francis did not receive any formal documentation about the case before 2017.
"Pope Francis had heard only that there had been allegations and rumours related to immoral conduct with adults occurring prior to McCarrick's appointment to Washington," says a summary of the report.
"Believing that the allegations had already been reviewed and rejected by Pope John Paul II, and well aware that McCarrick was active during the papacy of Benedict XVI, Pope Francis did not see the need to alter the approach that had been adopted."
The Pope changed course after a former altar boy came forward in 2017 alleging that McCarrick groped him when he was a teenager during preparations for Mass in 1971 and 1972 in New York.
This triggered a canonical trial that resulted in his defrocking in February 2019.
James Grein, whose testimony that McCarrick abused him for two decades starting when he was 11 was key to the cleric's downfall, said he was pleased the report was finally being released.
"There are so many people suffering out there because of one man," he said.
"He's destroyed me and he's destroyed thousands of other lives... It's time that the Catholic Church comes clean with all of its destruction."
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state whose office prepared the report, said it will have an impact on how bishops are selected.
