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Pope Francis Lifts Suspension on Nicaraguan Priest, Poet

Pope Francis has lifted the suspension imposed in 1983 on Nicaraguan priest and poet Ernesto Cardenal, the Vatican’s ambassador to Nicaragua said in a statement Monday.

Nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag said in a statement that Francis removed the canonical censures following a request from the 94-year-old Cardenal, who has been hospitalized for more than a week.

Pope John Paul II suspended Cardenal from his priestly duties because he had become culture minister in the leftist Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega after the rebels toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza.

John Paul II said that priests could not assume political posts and he was irked by a movement of pro-revolutionary priests such as Cardenal accused of ignoring instructions from the more conservative hierarchy and of mixing leftist ideology into theology.

John Paul II famously criticized Cardenal publicly at Managua’s international airport during a visit in 1983. In a widely circulated photograph, Cardenal knelt and reached to kiss the pope’s hand, but John Paul pulled his hand back and pointed his finger at Cardenal.

“Father Cardenal has been suspended from exercising the ministry for 35 years due to his political militancy,” the nuncio’s statement said. “The priest accepted the canonical punishment that was imposed on him and followed it without performing any pastoral activity. Furthermore, he had abandoned many years ago all political commitments.”

Cardenal’s personal assistant Luz Marina Acosta said he was in delicate, but stable condition in a local hospital, where Sommertag joined him in celebrating Mass on Sunday.

 “It was very moving and the father was very happy,” she said.

Cardenal, like many priests in Latin America in the 1960s, felt the pull of the leftist liberation theology that focused on ministering to the poor and liberating the oppressed.

Years after the revolution, however, he was among several Sandinista leaders who distanced themselves from Ortega.

He was easily identifiable in his signature black beret and loose white peasant shirts.

Among Cardenal’s works are “Epigrams” and “Zero Hour.” He has been nominated four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature since 2005.

The same suspension was imposed on Cardenal’s brother Fernando, who served as the Sandinista education minister and Miguel D’Escoto who was that government’s foreign minister. However, those priests had their suspensions lifted years ago.
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Kremlin Critics, Some Putin Allies Agree: Isolated Russian Web a Fantasy

Nearly a week after Russia’s lower house of parliament approved a preliminary measure aimed at safeguarding internet operations in case of a foreign cyber attack, Kremlin critics and some lawmakers seem to agree the entire enterprise is beyond the country’s technological capabilities.

The bill, which proposes the creation of “Runet,” a domestic network that would be designed to function independently of the global internet, has drawn comparisons to China’s “great firewall.”

Russian state-run media say the legislation was drafted in response to tensions with Western nations that accuse Moscow of perpetrating cyberattacks via social media platforms to wreak havoc in foreign elections.

Critics, however, call the legislation a Kremlin ploy to control domestic cyber-infrastructure, all part of a broader campaign to expand censorship and blunt online political mobilization campaigns.

The bill calls for Russian web traffic and data to be rerouted through points controlled by the state and for the creation of a domestic Domain Name System that would allow the internet to continue functioning in Russia even if it is cut off from foreign infrastructure.

During last week’s first reading, the proposed law sparked exasperation from some minority lawmakers who feared it would trigger a dysfunctional “internet Brexit,” whole others questioned how Russia would build the technical infrastructure required to support the legal provisions. By Brexit, they were drawing comparisons to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.

No IT experts among MPs

“How many of you are IT experts here, raise your hand. One? Then how can we vote for a bill we don’t understand?” said Valery Gartung, a lawmaker with the Kremlin-loyal Just Russia party.

“Russia doesn’t manufacture any IT hardware except cables; maybe some people should hang themselves on them,” said MP Sergei Ivanov of the nationalist LDPR, President Vladimir Putin’s former chief of staff.

One of the bill’s authors is Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer and one of the key suspects in the 2006 murder of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in Britain. Lugovoi dismissed the critics, emphasizing the massive cyber threat he says the U.S. poses.

“This isn’t kindergarten!” he shouted at the reading. “All of the websites in Syria” have been turned off by the U.S. before.

In a 2014 interview with Wired magazine, U.S. surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden alleged that the National Security Agency accidentally cut off Syria’s internet while attempting to infiltrate it in 2012.

Concern about US cyber aggression

Andrei Soldatov, who co-authored The Red Web, a history of internet surveillance in Russia, said concern about U.S. cyber aggression is just the latest pretext for political censorship campaigns that can be traced to the Soviet era.

“Look at the text of the legislation,” he said. “Censorship and filtering is an essential part of it. It calls for new equipment to be installed with all internet service providers” that alters or impedes traffic flows and filters content. “This has nothing to do with protection against the U.S.; I don’t buy this explanation that it’s all about protecting the Russian internet users or the Russian internet against possible U.S. aggression.”

“The government is now mostly concerned with one thing: the mobilizing capability of the internet,” he said, explaining that Kremlin-led efforts to gain control of the internet since Russia’s historic 2012 street protests have scored preciously few successes. “So they actually want to strip in the internet of this capability.” During Soviet times, he said, the idea was to seal the country completely in order to stop the spread of uncensored information.

“But today, even with the filtering we have now, if you want to get access to some sensitive information on the internet, you can get it quite easily,” he said. “The idea is to prevent social platforms and the internet as a whole from being used by political activists to start unrest.”

Although an isolated Russian net will compromise prospects for international digital commerce, Soldatov said officials aren’t likely concerned, as the country’s nearly decade-long “climate of internet uncertainty” has already forced some Russia IT companies to flee the market.

Kremlin officials long ago decided to put security before commerce, Soldatov said.

“Two years ago, Putin signed a new draft of the information security doctrine. And if you check the text, you can see the main idea there is that Russian telecommunication and IT companies should check first with Russian security services before introducing new technologies, he said. “So it’s clear that security comes first and technological progress comes second, and that’s not good for business. It means that you first have to go to the FSB and ask them whether they’re happy with this or that new technology.”

Internet freedom

Asked if it will be possible for free speech and internet freedom advocates to circumvent impending restrictions, Soldatov voiced optimism.

“Yes, absolutely. It’s already clear that this kind of system would have gaps. The system would be quite porous, because we are talking about the internet itself, and it’s a technology that by definition was designed to find a way for traffic to go,” he said.

“And this is the case for many countries, like in China, [where] entire communities of activists could find a way,” he added. “The problem is for the rest. So you sort of see an internet divided, with, say, 70 percent or 80 percent of people who live in a situation they accept, and then you have some activists who would find a way, and that’s what might happen.”

In an interview with Riga-based Meduza news outlet, Stanislav Shakirov of the digital censorship watchdog “Roskomsvoboda” said Russia, unlike China, lacks the domestic investment infrastructure to develop its own tech startups, a fact that would be likely to doom the commercial prospects for an independent Russian internet.

“Not only are Russian internet users accustomed to having their pick of Western online services, but Russia’s domestic market isn’t big enough to sustain competition in isolation, and its unfriendly business climate remains a major hindrance,” he said.

But Ekho Moskvy radio anchor Alexander Plushev, who has reported on internet freedom issues in Russia for years, says supporters of the bills aren’t concerned with security, commerce or censorship.

“I think it’s just corruption, just to get money, to build their own independent network,” he said, explaining that it is primarily Russian government contractors who stand to profit from a privatized Russian internet. “That’s the main reason for this law.”

(Some information is from AFP.)
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No Need for Shinzo Abe: Trump already nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is not saying whether or not he nominated Donald Trump for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, but the question may be moot: the U.S. president has been put forward by others for the prestigious award.

During a White House news conference on Friday, Trump said the Japanese premier had given him “the most beautiful copy” of a five-page nomination letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Since then Abe has declined to say whether he had done so.

Regardless, Trump has already been nominated by two Norwegian lawmakers.

“We have nominated him of course for the positive developments on the Korean Peninsula,” Per-Willy Amundsen, who was Justice Minister in Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s Cabinet in 2016-2018, told Reuters.

“It has been a very difficult situation and the tensions have since lowered and a lot of it is due to Trump’s unconventional diplomatic style,” he added.

Amundsen, who is a member of the rightwing Progress Party, wrote a letter to the award committee together with his parliamentary colleague Christian Tybring-Gjedde, he said.

The letter was submitted in June, immediately after a summit Trump held in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Unaimed at easing tensions and tackling Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

Tybring-Gjedde, who sits on the Norwegian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, also confirmed the joint nomination of Trump when contacted by Reuters.

“A possible award would of course depend on the talks leading to a credible disarmament deal,” he said.

A wide range of people can nominate for the Nobel Peace Prize, including members of parliaments and governments, heads of state, university professors of history, social sciences or law and past Nobel Peace Prize laureates, among others.

The deadline for nominations for the 2019 prize, which will be announced on Oct. 11., was Jan. 31.

The five-strong Norwegian Nobel Committee, which decides who wins the award, does not comment on nominations, keeping secret for 50 years the names of nominators and unsuccessful nominees.

Still, it did say earlier this month that 304 candidates were nominated for this year’s prize, of which 219 are individuals and 85 are organizations.

Last year’s prize was jointly awarded to Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege and Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad.

 
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Polish PM Cancels Israel Visit Amid new Holocaust Tensions

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki canceled his plans to attend a meeting of central European leaders in Israel starting Monday amid new tensions over how Polish behavior during the Holocaust is remembered and characterized.

Morawiecki informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s of his decision by phone Sunday, Michal Dworczyk, who heads the prime minister’s chancellery, said. Poland’s foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, plans to attend instead, he said.

It “is a signal that the historical truth is a fundamental issue for Poland, and the defense of the good name of Poland is and always will be decisive,” Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek explained.

Netanyahu said Thursday during a Middle East conference hosted by the United States and Poland that “Poles cooperated with the Nazis” – wording suggesting that some Poles participated in killing Jews during the German occupation of Poland.

He was initially quoted by some Israeli media outlets as saying not “Poles” but “The Poles” cooperated, phrasing which could be taken as blaming the entire Polish nation.

Netanyahu’s office said he was misquoted. The Polish government summoned the Israeli ambassador on Friday and later said it was not satisfied with the explanation of the Israeli leader being quoted incorrectly.

Netanyahu was supposed to meet with the leaders of the four central European countries known as the Visegrad Group — Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia — during the two-day meeting in Israel.

This incident follows a major spat that Warsaw and Jerusalem had last year over a new Polish law that makes it illegal to blame the Polish nation for collaboration in the Holocaust.

At the height of the crisis, Morawiecki at one point equated Polish perpetrators of the Holocaust to supposed “Jewish perpetrators.”

Now, with general and European elections later this year, Morawiecki bowed out of the Jerusalem trip because he “has to think about the far-right and anti-Semitic electorate,” said Tomasz Lis, the editor of the Polish edition of Newsweek and a critic of the government.

Germany occupied Poland in 1939, annexing part of it to Germany and directly governing the rest. Unlike other countries occupied by Germany, Poland did not have a collaborationist government.

The prewar Polish government and military fled into exile, and an underground resistance army fought the Nazis inside the country and tried to warn a deaf world about the Holocaust. Thousands of Poles also risked their own lives to help Jews.

Because of that history, Poles find references to Polish “collaboration” to be unfair and hurtful.

However, individual Poles did take part in killing Jews during and after the war. Many Holocaust survivors and their relatives carry painful memories of persecution at Polish hands. In Israel, there has been anger at what many there perceive to be Polish attempts today to whitewash that history.

The dispute last sparked an explosion of anti-Semitic hate speech in Poland, and there were signs of another spike in recent days.

 
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Pence Rebukes Europe for Iran, Venezuela, Russia Links

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has rebuked European allies for their stance on Iran and Venezuela, in a speech Saturday at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. As Henry Ridgwell reports from the conference, the United States brought its largest delegation in decades and called on Europe to apply economic pressure on Iran to give the Iranian people peace and security.
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France to Investigate Anti-Semitic Abuse From ‘Yellow Vest’ Protesters

French prosecutors have opened an investigation Sunday into anti-Semitic comments made by Yellow Vest protesters against a renowned philosopher and intellectual a day earlier.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said Sunday an investigation was launched into “public insult based on origin, ethnicity, nationality, race or religion,” the Associated Press reported. A video broadcast on multiple French news channels shows peple hurling insults such as “dirty Zionists” and “France is ours” at Alain Finkielkraut.

Finkielkraut, 69, told French media that he had approached the protesters, who have held demonstrations in Paris for 14 consecutive Saturdays, out of curiosity. Finkielkraut had initially supported the movement, but called the protests “grotesque” after Saturday’s incident.

French president Emmanuel Macron was among a wide range of politicians who denounced the comments.

“The anti-Semitic insults he has been subjected to are the absolute negation of who we are and what makes us a great nation. We will not tolerate them,” Macron said on Twitter.

The protesters gained their nickname from the fluorescent vests they wear while marching, which are safety vests French drivers are required to keep in their cars.

Protests around the country began November 17 against a planned fuel tax increase. The demonstrations have transformed into protests largely against  Macron’s liberal economic reform policies. Macron made tax and salary concessions in December, but protests have continued.

Saturday’s insults came amid reports of a stark increase in anti-Jewish offenses, which police estimate are up 74 percent from last year.

Fourteen political parties, including Macron’s ruling La Republique en Marche, have called for symbolic gatherings next Tuesday to rally against anti-Semitism.
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Far Right to Get Seats in Spanish Parliament, Polls Indicate

Far-right lawmakers are set to be elected to Spain’s parliament for the first time in nearly four decades, two opinion polls showed Saturday, forecasting that no single party would get a majority in a snap election on April 28. 

Spain’s Socialists, who have been in power since June with a minority government, are set to gain more seats than any other party but fall well short of a majority, the surveys showed. 

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the early election on Friday after Catalan pro-independence parties who had previously backed him joined opposition parties in defeating his 2019 budget bill this week. 

The far-right party Vox would win up to 46 seats out of 350, according to a GESOP poll published by the El Periodico newspaper, while the GAD3 polling firm for the La Vanguardia newspaper forecast 16 seats. 

Vox is a newcomer on the Spanish political scene, and pollsters had underestimated its score in a regional election in Andalusia in December, where the anti-immigration party won 12 seats. 

Memories of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who died in 1975, meant Spain had long been been immune to the growing popularity of far-right parties in much of Europe. 

The polls show a fragmented political landscape in which the political identity of the next government is yet unclear. 

Sanchez’s Socialist Party would win 115 to 117 seats in the election, according to the GESOP poll. The conservative Popular Party would get 75 to 77 seats. 

With such an outcome, one of the two main parties would need the support of at least another party to secure a majority. 

The center-right Ciudadanos would win 44 to 47 seats, in a tight race with Vox to be the third-largest party. 

The polls were the first published since elections were called.
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UK Airline Ceases Operations, Blames Brexit

British regional airline Flybmi has gone into administration and canceled all flights immediately, the company said in a statement Saturday, blaming Brexit uncertainty as one of the reasons for its collapse. 

A spokesperson for British Midland Regional Ltd. said the company had made the decision because of increased fuel and carbon costs and of uncertainty arising from Britain’s plans to leave the European Union on March 29. 

The airline, based in the English East Midlands, operates 17 planes flying to 25 European cities. It employs 376 people in Britain, Germany, Sweden and Belgium. 

“We sincerely regret that this course of action has become the only option open to us, but the challenges, particularly those created by Brexit, have proven to be insurmountable,” the company said. 

Spikes in fuel and carbon costs had undermined efforts to move the airline into profit. 

It added: “Current trading and future prospects have also been seriously affected by the uncertainty created by the Brexit process, which has led to our inability to secure valuable flying contracts in Europe and lack of confidence around bmi’s ability to continue flying between destinations in Europe.” 

The airline, which said it carried 522,000 passengers on 29,000 flights in 2018, advised customers with bookings to contact their bank or payment card issuer to obtain refunds. 
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China Rebuffs Germany’s Call for US Missile Deal With Russia 

China on Saturday rejected German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s appeal to join a Cold War-era arms control treaty that the United States accuses Russia of breaching, saying it would place unfair limits on the Chinese military. 

Fearing a nuclear arms race between China, Russia and the United States after the collapse of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the United States is withdrawing from, Merkel made her call for a global treaty. 

“Disarmament is something that concerns us all and we would of course be glad if such talks were held not just between the United States, Europe and Russia but also with China,” Merkel told the Munich Security Conference. 

Russia and the United States are the signatories to the 1987 INF Treaty that bans land-based missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometres (300-3,400 miles) and which U.S. President Donald Trump started the six-month withdrawal from this month, blaming Russian violations. 

Moscow denies any wrongdoing, but the United States and its NATO allies want Russia to destroy its 9M729 nuclear-capable cruise missile system, which Washington says could allow Russia to strike Europe with almost no warning. 

Merkel’s suggestion of involving China in a negotiation is seen by European NATO diplomats as a potential way out of the impasse because a new treaty could address American concerns about a growing military threat from China and Russia. 

China ‘doesn’t pose a threat’

But China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi, who spoke on a panel in Munich, said that Chinese missiles were defensive. 

“China develops its capabilities strictly according to its defensive needs and doesn’t pose a threat to anybody else. So we are opposed to the multilateralization of the INF,” he said. 

China’s stated ambition is to modernize its People’s Liberation Army by 2035, improve its air force and push into new technologies including very high-speed cruise missiles and artificial intelligence. 

Its defense budget grew nearly 6 percent between 2017 and 2018, according to the London-based International Institute for Security Studies (IISS). 

Retired Chinese Gen. Yao Yunzhu told delegates a new arms control agreement would work only if it included sea- and air-launched missiles, as well as land, because most of China’s military technology is ground-based and the country would not want to put itself at a disadvantage. 

Cheaper to build, more mobile and easier to hide, ground-based rocket launchers are an attractive option to China as it develops its armed forces, experts say, whereas the United States operates more costly sea-based systems to comply with the INF. 

“China is traditionally a land power and the Chinese military is a ground force,” Yao said. 

“If China is to enter into these kinds of negotiations, I think it ought to be more comprehensive to include not only land-based but also air- and sea-based strike capabilities … and that would be hugely complicated,” she said. 
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Vatican Expels Former US Cardinal McCarrick

The Vatican said Saturday that Pope Francis has defrocked disgraced former U.S. cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

In July of last year, Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals following allegations he had sexually abused minor and adult seminarians over a period of decades.

The Vatican said in a statement that in January 2019 it had found McCarrick guilty of “. . . solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.” (The Sixth Commandment says ‘Thou shall not commit adultery’ and is one of the Ten Commandments the Bible says were given by God.  The Commandments are fundamental to Judaism and Christianity.)

McCarrick appealed the decision expelling him from the priesthood, but it was upheld and McCarrick was notified of the decision Friday. .

The Vatican statement said its decision “is definitive and admits of no further recourse or appeal.”

McCarrick had been a highly respected and longtime ambassador of the Catholic Church was was a confident of popes and U.S. presidents.

The 88-year-old McCarrick was ordained a priest in 1958.  His appointments included:  auxiliary bishop of New York, bishop of Metuchen, archbishop of Newark, and archbishop of Washington.  

In 2001, McCarrick became a cardinal.
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Moscow Court Extends Arrest of US Investor Accused of Fraud

A Russian court has decided to prolong the detention of American investor Michael Calvey, founder of Baring Vostok Capital Partners, a Moscow-based private equity group.

Late Friday the court moved to extend Calvey’s arrest for at least 72 hours and called for a second hearing Saturday.

Four other defendants in the case have been ordered to remain in pretrial custody for two months.

A spokeswoman for the Moscow district court Friday announced that Calvey had been detained along with other members of the firm Thursday on suspicion of stealing $37.5 million (2.5 billion rubles), a charge that carries of a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Private equity group partner

Calvey, 51, is a senior partner who founded Baring Vostok in 1994. According to the firm’s website, the private equity group holds more than $3.5 billion in committed capital and is a controlling shareholder in Russia’s Vostochny Bank, which focuses on Siberian and Far Eastern markets.

A statement on the Baring Vostok website said the company “believes that the detention of its employees and the charges that have been brought are a result of a conflict with shareholders of Vostochniy [sic] Bank. We have full confidence in the legality of our employees’ actions and will vigorously defend their rights. Baring Vostok’s activities in the Russian Federation are fully compliant with all applicable laws.”

Before launching Baring Vostok, Calvey worked for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and for Salomon Brothers. Since arriving in Moscow in the mid-1990s, he’s become a prominent and highly visible member of Moscow investment community. He is a board member of the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

​Pleas from investment community 

The announcement of Calvey’s detention sent shockwaves through the international investment community, prompting numerous pleas for his immediate release.

Herman Gref, head of Sberbank, Russia’s biggest state bank, issued a statement calling Calvey a “decent, honest man,” while Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s $10 billion sovereign wealth fund and a close contact of Russian President Vladimir Putin, described Calvey as “committed to the highest ethical standards accepted in the investment community.”

Kremlin officials Friday said Putin wasn’t aware of the charges being brought against Calvey.

“We are aware that a U.S. citizen was arrested on February 14, 2019, in Russia, a State Department spokesperson said Friday. “We have no higher priority than the protection of U.S. citizens abroad. Due to privacy considerations, we do not have any additional information at this time.”

Calvey is the third Westerner to face prosecution in Russia since Dec. 31, when American citizen Paul Whelan, a former Marine, was jailed on accusations of spying. Last week a Russian court sentenced Dennis Christensen, a Danish adherent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion, to six years in prison for “organizing the activity of an extremist organization.”

Although Russia has jailed foreign investors who were vocal opponents of the Kremlin, Calvey has no such record of public political opinions.

Russia is “a do-it-yourself market,” Calvey told The Washington Post in 2011. “You can’t rely on outside service providers.”

In that interview, Calvey said his group operates with 20 investors, four full-time lawyers and three government relations managers, along with a host of accountants and administrative support. At that time, all 10 of his partners were Russian nationals.

“International firms aren’t equipped for Russia,” he told the Post. “And they usually have a low tolerance threshold for uncertainty and no sense of humor for Russian surprises,” which he described as surprise audits, seizure of assets for back taxes, and sudden, sometimes seemingly arbitrary, business license reviews.

‘The final straw’

Vocal Kremlin critic and Hermitage Capital co-founder Bill Browder was denied entry into Russian in 2005 after his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, began investigating governmental misconduct and corruption in response to suspicious tax evasion charges brought against Hermitage by Russia’s Interior Ministry.

Magnitsky died under suspicious circumstances in Russian custody in 2009.

“The arrest of Mike Calvey in Moscow should be the final straw that Russia is an entirely corrupt and [uninvestable] country,” Browder said in a tweet Friday. “Of all the people I knew in Moscow, Mike played by their rules, kept his head down and never criticized the government.”

Pete Cobus is VOA’s acting Moscow correspondent. State Department correspondent Nike Ching contributed reporting from Washington. Some information is from Reuters.
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Former US Cardinal McCarrick Dismissed From Priesthood

Disgraced former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been expelled from the Roman Catholic priesthood following allegations against him, including sexual abuse of minors, the Vatican said Saturday.

McCarrick, who in July became the first Roman Catholic prelate in nearly 100 years to lose the title of cardinal, has now become the highest profile church figure to be dismissed from the priesthood in modern times.

The defrocking was announced ahead of next week’s meeting at the Vatican between the heads of national Catholic churches to discuss the global sexual abuse crisis.

McCarrick had appealed the decision, but it was upheld and Pope Francis said no further appeal would be allowed.

The allegations against McCarrick date back decades when he was still rising to the top of the U.S. church hierarchy.

McCarrick, who became a power-broker as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., from 2001 to 2006, is living in seclusion in a remote friary in Kansas.

He has responded publicly to only one of the allegations, saying he has “absolutely no recollection” of an alleged case of sexual abuse of a 16-year-old boy more than 50 years ago.
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