Prominent Catholic cardinal resigns amid sex abuse allegations

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Theodore McCarrick on Saturday, seeing the prominent cardinal and former archbishop of Washington, D.C., step down amid a furor of sex abuse allegations.

The American Catholic Church in June deemed credible an accusation that McCarrick abused a teenager about 50 years ago, and since then multiple other accusers have come forward. McCarrick denies all memory of the situation involving the teenager and has not commented on the other allegations.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.