Tuesday, July 31, 2018 | 6:15 a.m.
VATICAN CITY — The highest-ranking American at the Vatican insists he never knew or even suspected that his former boss had reportedly sexually abused boys and adult seminarians, telling The Associated Press he is livid that he was kept in the dark because he could have done something about it.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Vatican's family and laity office, spoke Tuesday as the U.S. church hierarchy has come under fire from ordinary American Catholics outraged that ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick's misconduct with men was apparently an open secret in some U.S. church circles.
Some of that outrage has been directed at Farrell, who was consecrated as a bishop by McCarrick in 2001 and served as his vicar general in the archdiocese of Washington until McCarrick's 2006 retirement.
Farrell said: "Never once did I even suspect."
