ROME – A Vatican investigation into ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has found that a series of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports that he slept with seminarians, and determined that Pope Francis merely continued his predecessors’ naive handling of the predator until a former altar boy alleged abuse.The Vatican took the extraordinary step Tuesday of publishing its two-year, 400-plus-page internal investigation into the American prelate's rise and fall in a bid to restore credibility to the U.S.
and Vatican hierarchies, which have been shattered by the McCarrick scandal.Francis defrocked McCarrick, 90, last year after a Vatican investigation confirmed decades of allegations that the globe-trotting envoy and successful.