“If one member suffers, all suffers together with it” (1 Cor 12:26). The report concludes with a biblical quote that summarizes it completely. McCarrick was no ordinary man: he was intelligent, smart, educated, savvy, resourceful, workaholic, organized... and very prideful. He was the kind of manager every company in the world would like to have. He was a source of envy and need for his peers, and fear to his subordinates. He practiced something that seems innocuous, but that is a source of corruption: gift-giving to those in high places. He also liked to continually being noticed by highlighting every accomplishment he obtained. With his hard work, knowledge and talents, he paves his way to the highest ecclesiastical positions. But he liked to have his “indulgences”. Throughout the report it is clear that those who denounced him were very few compared to all the people that he had access to. At the beginning, all the denunces were deemed without support, diffamation to an exemplary man. John Paul II viewed them in the light of his memories in a communist and paranoid environment: campaings to diminish a seemingly examplary man. Under Benedict XVI, the denounces were taken more seriously, but still deemed unsubstantiated, product of already troubled priests; the Church was more worried about the bad publicity that might emerge from the case than from the possibility that McCarrick was indeed guilty. He was not followed upon, and other members of the Church got benefices from his work. Until Pope Francis and with the help of the media more accusations emerged, and finally he was expelled... when he had over 80 years old.

Unlike what was told in the media, the case is very complex: what do you do with an “employee” that is highly successful, but have deep problems and abuses other people? What do you do if you have some accusations, but most people surrounding the denuncers tells you that something could have happened, but they witnessed nothing? What happens when people of authority only listen to their peers opinions and they dismiss their subordinates? This report is not only for catholics, the media, or lawyers: this is for everyone interested in how corruption works, and the dilemmas it imposes upon our judgement.