Theodore McCarrick

Pope Francis this week apologized for decrying the "frociaggine" — or "faggotry" — in the Vatican and in Catholic seminaries for the second time in a matter of weeks. On Tuesday in a private meeting, Francis mentioned the "air of faggotry" in the Vatican, which followed his May 20 comment that "nella chiesa c'è troppa aria di frociaggine" — "in our Church there is too much of an air of faggotry." The Spectator reached out to Frédéric Martel, an anchor at Radio France, a professor at the ZHdK University in Zurich and the author of twelve books, including In the Closet of the Vatican, his explosive New York Times bestseller about the widespread hypocritical homosexual behavior rife in the higher echelons of the Church.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, formerly the power base of serial abuser 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick, is the most discredited in the United States. And it intends to stay that way. As the new Catholic publication the Pillar revealed on Wednesday, it's planning to bung $2 million in the direction of ex-Cardinal McCarrick's successor and protégé, Cardinal Donald Wuerl. And this at a time when parishes and schools all over America are facing closure, and Washington is reportedly facing 'an unfunded liability of at least $35 million'. The decision to allocate a fat chunk of money to Wuerl is astonishing. Here's some background. Wuerl was forced to resign as archbishop of Washington in 2018 after a 'lapse of memory' about his old friend's McCarrick's sexual activities.

On Tuesday the Vatican published its long-delayed report on the subject of ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the insatiable sexual predator who served as archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006 but continued to wield huge influence in the Catholic Church until 2018, when he was finally exposed by the media and forced to resign as a cardinal.Less than a week later, it’s becoming clear that the document is a laborious but clumsy whitewash. Let me explain why.The ostensible purpose of the 500-page report was to explain how McCarrick rose to high episcopal office despite the fact that his beach-house assaults on seminarians were common knowledge among US bishops and Vatican officials for decades. And this it succeeded in doing, more or less.