Pope Accepts Resignation of Cardinal McCarrick from College of Cardinals

This is good news. Not as good as learning that Francis had stripped 'Uncle Ted' og the Cardinalatial Dignity would have been, but given Francis' 'Who am I to judge' mentality, I didn't expect that. It's also not the new I want to hear. What I want to hear is that this vile pervert is behind bars. The best news would be that he has gone to the Judgement Seat to answer for his crimes!

From One Peter Five

In a statement from the Vatican this morning, it has been announced that the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the College of Cardinals has been accepted in the wake of a rising tide of sexual abuse allegations. The full statement, as translated by Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register, reads:

Yesterday evening the Holy Father received the letter in which Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington (U.S.A.), presented his resignation as a member of the College of Cardinals.

Pope Francis accepted his resignation from the cardinalate and has ordered his suspension from the exercise of any public ministry, together with the obligation to remain in a house yet to be indicated to him, for a life of prayer and penance until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial.

Pentin notes that the last cardinal to be “stripped of all cardinalatial rights and duties” was Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien, now deceased, who was archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. O’Brien also faced sexual abuse allegations. He was allowed to retain his title of cardinal. Before the O’Brien case, writes Pentin, the most recent resignation from the College was that of Cardinal Louis Billot in 1927, who resigned “in protest at the Church’s condemnation of the far-Right anti-Semitic Action Française movement.”

No date appears to have been set for a canonical trial for the 88 year old cardinal at the center of the Church’s latest — but almost certainly not last — imbroglio over clerical sexual abuse.