Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore
McCarrick has been charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy.
According to court records obtained by
The Boston Globe, the incident occurred during a wedding
reception in the 1970s.
Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick, 91,
in 2019 after a Vatican investigation concluded that he was a sexual
predator.
According to the AP, the victim has
said that McCarrick groped him when he was 16 during his brother's
wedding reception held on the campus of Wellesley College. The man
told investigators that McCarrick fondled him in a private room.
McCarrick told him to pray to God for redemption of his sins.
The charges – three counts of
indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 – make McCarrick
the first cardinal in the United States to face sexual abuse charges
against a minor.
The man making the allegations is
represented by Mitchell Garabedian.
“It takes an enormous amount of
courage for a sexual abuse victim to report having been sexually
abused to investigators and proceed through the criminal process,”
Garabedian
told the AP in an email. “Let the facts be presented, the law
applied, and a fair verdict rendered.”