What just happened? That’s the question everyone has been asking ever since Tuesday of last week, when Noticieros Televisa aired an in-depth exclusive interview with Pope Francis, and Crux and CBS jointly published stories backed by a document dump from a cleric who was ordained by Theodore McCarrick for Newark in the mid-1990s and has spent most of the past two decades in Rome.
Mgr Anthony Figueiredo, the priest responsible for releasing the documents, set up a website on which he presented his reasons for leaking the texts, which he acquired over years of occasional service as Roman point man and Guy Friday to Uncle Ted. The big takeaways from “the Figueiredo Report” (thefigueiredoreport.com) thus far are that there were restrictions on McCarrick, of which several senior churchmen were aware. According to Mgr Figueiredo, they include Cardinal Donald Wuerl, McCarrick’s successor in DC, who nevertheless continues – through a spokesman – to deny that he knew of them. The restrictions were quietly imposed and rarely enforced.
