Cardinal Kevin Farrell The top Vatican official who will accompany Pope Francis on his trip to Ireland this month has said he was “shocked” to hear allegations of years of sexual abuse and harassment by his former boss Theodore McCarrick.
The Vatican announced at the weekend that Pope Francis had accepted Dr McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals and ordered the 88-year-old former Archbishop of Washington DC to undertake a life of prayer and penance while the claims are investigated.
Dublin-born Cardinal Kevin Farrell [pictured], who now heads the Vatican office for laity and family, was consecrated a bishop by McCarrick and served as his auxiliary for six years.
“I was shocked, overwhelmed; I never heard any of this before in the six years I was there with him,” Cardinal Farrell said speaking from his Vatican office.
The Irishman was incardinated in the Archdiocese of Washington in 1984, and shortly after McCarrick was named archbishop of Washington in 2000, the future Cardinal Farrell was named his vicar general.
The Vatican official said he had never met Cardinal McCarrick until he became archbishop of Washington.
“I worked in the chancery in Washington and never, no indication, none whatsoever,” Cardinal Farrell said. “Nobody ever talked to me about this and I was involved, heavily involved,” in investigating and confronting the problem of clerical sexual abuse for the Archdiocese of Washington, especially after the US bishops approved their charter for child protection in 2002.