Angelica La Rosa

“Pope Francis does not have the authority to change Church teaching. He knows this. The media’s barely-concealed glee that the Catholic Church is ‘progressing’ is a distraction. We should put the emphasis where it belongs: on the continued cover-up of then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s homosexual predation,” said Ruth Inst. President Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. “Why is the Vatican suppressing a report on his crimes?”

In an interview with a Mexican reporter in 2017, Pope Francis seemed to endorse same-sex unions. However, as Ruth Inst. Senior Research Associate Fr. Paul Sullins explains: “a personal, spontaneous statement by the pope in an interview has no doctrinal authority.

“The most recent authoritative statement on the matter declares, ‘The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions,’” Sullins noted.

“We need to get the conversation back where it belongs,” Morse said, “which is the Vatican covering up massive crimes of homosexual predation. Trying to convince people that they are more ‘gay friendly’ than the supposedly outdated Church is changing the subject. According to the Catholic News Agency, the Vatican opened its investigation of McCarrick two years ago. Rumors have circulated for months that the report is completed – a report that names who knew about McCarrick’s crimes, when they knew, and why they covered up for him.”

An August 11 editorial in the National Catholic Reporter explains, “Theodore McCarrick was promoted through the ranks of the Catholic hierarchy for decades, despite multiple, then-secret reports of his sexual misconduct with seminarians.” He was made archbishop of Washington, D.C. in 2000 and a cardinal in 2001, while he was abusing young men in the Church.

“We insist that the McCarrick report be released immediately,” Morse said. “It’s been more than a year since Pope Francis ordered it. We understand that the report has been completed. It should have been released. That it hasn’t is a scandal. What are they hiding?”

Fr. Sullins, retired professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America and now Senior Research Associate of the Ruth Institute, has authored two definitive reports on the correlation between homosexuality among Catholic priests and clerical sexual abuse, including “Report on Clergy Sex Abuse.”