‘PERSONIFICATION OF EVIL’

High-Profile Ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick Deemed Unfit for Sex Abuse Trial

McCarrick was accused of sexually assaulting an underage boy in 1974.

Ex-Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick won’t stand trial on his sex abuse charges after a Massachusetts judged dismissed the case Wednesday on account of the 93-year-old’s dementia. McCarrick was accused of sexually assaulting an underage boy in 1974, and was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after an internal Vatican probe found that McCarrick had a history of sexual assault. On Wednesday, a psychologist hired by the prosecution said that McCarrick’s dementia caused significant issues with his memory, and that “there is no way they are going to get better.” Mitchell Garabedian, the lawyer for McCarrick’s accuser, said many will still see the ex-cardinal as the “personification of evil” in Catholicism. “In spite of the criminal court’s decision today, many clergy sexual abuse victims feel as though former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is and will always be the permanent personification of evil within the Catholic Church,” Garabedian said Wednesday.