Pope's alleged cover-up pivots on when, if sanctions imposed

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, with Pope Francis. Photo / AP

The archbishop of Washington has "categorically denied" ever being informed that his predecessor had been sanctioned for sexual misconduct, undercutting a key element of a bombshell allegation that Pope Francis covered up clergy abuse.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl issued a statement after the Vatican's former ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, accused Pope Francis of effectively freeing ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the sanctions in 2013 despite knowing of McCarrick's sexual predations against seminarians.

Wuerl's denial corresponds with the public record, which provides ample evidence that McCarrick lived a life completely devoid of ecclesiastic restriction after the sanctions were said to have been imposed in 2009 or 2010.

That suggests that Pope Benedict XVI either didn't impose sanctions or never conveyed them in any official way to the people who could enforce them - or that McCarrick simply flouted them and Benedict's Vatican was unwilling or unable to stop him.

Vigano's claims have thrown Francis' papacy into crisis, undermining once again his insistence that he is intent on ridding the church of sex abuse and cover-up.

The core of Vigano's cover-up charge against Francis rests on what sanctions, if any, Benedict imposed on McCarrick and what if anything Francis did to alter them, when armed with the same knowledge of McCarrick's misdeeds that Benedict had.

It was apparently common knowledge that McCarrick would invite seminarians to his New Jersey beach house, and into his bed.

- AP