ROME — Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, as a cardinal, ordering him to a “life of prayer and penance’’ after allegations that the prelate sexually abused minors and adult seminarians over the course of decades.
Acting swiftly to contain a widening sex abuse scandal at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church, the pope officially suspended McCarrick from the exercise of any public ministry after receiving his resignation letter Friday evening.
Francis also demanded that the prelate remain in seclusion “until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial,’’ the Vatican announced Saturday.
McCarrick appears to be the first cardinal in history to step down from the College of Cardinals because of sexual abuse allegations. While he remains a priest pending the outcome of a Vatican trial, he has been stripped of his highest honor and will no longer be called upon to advise the pope and travel on his behalf.
A prominent Catholic voice in international and public policy, McCarrick was first removed from public ministry on June 20, after a church panel substantiated allegations that he had sexually abused a teenage altar boy 47 years ago while serving as a priest in New York.
McCarrick, now 88, said at the time that he was innocent.
Subsequent interviews by The New York Times revealed that some in the church hierarchy had known for decades about accusations that he had preyed on men who wanted to become priests, sexually harassing and touching them.
Then a 60-year-old man, identified only as James, alleged that McCarrick, a close family friend, had begun to abuse him in 1969, when he was 11 years old, and that the abuse had lasted nearly two decades.
The Times investigation detailed settlements amounting to tens of thousands of dollars in 2005 and 2007, paid to men who had complained of abuse by McCarrick when he was a bishop in New Jersey in the 1980s.
On Saturday, a former altar boy whose abuse allegations started the unraveling of the cardinal’s lifetime of honors said he believed that McCarrick was resigning only because he was being forced to, not because he was accepting responsibility.
“I am kind of appalled that it has taken this long for him to get caught,’’ said the 62-year-old man, who identified himself only as Mike. “But I am glad I am the first one that could open the door to other people.’’
The late Cardinal Bernard Law was allowed to stay a cardinal after he resigned as archbishop of Boston, after revelations that he had allowed a systematic coverup of pedophile priests while leading that diocese.
After resigning from his Boston post, Law was transferred to a prestigious job at a Rome basilica, which drew anger from many abuse survivors.
A spokesman for Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, who heads the pope’s commission on preventing clergy sexual abuse, on Saturday referred a Boston Globe reporter to the Vatican for comment on McCarrick.
O’Malley has called for changes in how the church handles sex abuse allegations against bishops and allegations involving adult seminarians, who were not covered in the church’s sex abuse reforms of 2002.
On Wednesday, O’Malley said in a statement: “These cases and others require more than apologies. They raise up the fact that when charges are brought regarding a bishop or a cardinal, a major gap still exists in the church’s policies on sexual conduct and sexual abuse.’’
Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts group that documents the sexual abuse scandal in the church and advocates for victims, called for Francis to make the trial proceedings against McCarrick public, and to open an investigation into how McCarrick was permitted to advance his church career despite repeated warnings against him.
“The officials responsible must be identified and disciplined,’’ McKiernan said.
Resignations of cardinals are extremely rare for any reason. The last resignation was of the French prelate Louis Billot in 1927, because of political tensions with the Holy See.
Keith Patrick O’Brien, a former archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, waived his rights as a cardinal in 2013, after accusations emerged of inappropriate sexual behavior with junior clergy. But he remained in the College of Cardinals until his death in March of this year.
McCarrick’s resignation comes as Francis faces increased pressure to show he is serious about cracking down on bishops and cardinals found to have abused people or covered up abuse.
After a Vatican envoy confirmed this year that the Roman Catholic Church in Chile had for decades allowed sexual abuse to go unchecked, the pope apologized, met with victims, and accepted the resignation of some bishops.
On Monday, prosecutors in Chile said they were investigating 36 cases of sexual abuse against Catholic priests, bishops, and lay persons.
In April, Cardinal George Pell of Australia, who as the Vatican’s finance chief is one of the Holy See’s highest officials, was ordered to stand trial in an Australian court on several charges of sexual abuse.
The next month, Philip Wilson, the archbishop of Adelaide, was convicted of covering up a claim of sexual abuse in the 1970s. With his conviction, Wilson became the highest-ranking Catholic official in the world to be convicted of concealing abuse crimes.
Last month, Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella, a former Vatican diplomat in Washington, was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison by a Vatican tribunal for possessing and distributing child pornography.
His sentence was the first in modern history that the Vatican’s own tribunal had handed down in a clerical abuse case. He will now face a canonical trial, which could lead to his removal from the priesthood.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has not responded to calls for broader reform since the allegations against McCarrick were made public last month.
