Theodore McCarrick, a once-powerful cardinal who died Friday and was expelled from the priesthood over sexual abuse allegations, had legal ties to Massachusetts.
McCarrick, 94, was charged in Dedham District Court in 2021 for alleged sexual assault of a teen boy at a wedding reception at Wellesley College in the 1970s, making him the highest-ranking Roman Catholic official in the United States to face criminal prosecution in the clergy sexual abuse scandal.
McCarrick, a former archbishop of Washington, D.C., had been diagnosed with dementia and spent the last several years residing in Missouri in an assisted living facility for clerics accused of molesting children.
In 2019, Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick after a Vatican investigation found him guilty of molesting adults and children.
Despite years’ of accusations from numerous victims, McCarrick never stood trial for his alleged sex crimes.
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McCarrick’s case in Dedham District Court was dismissed in the summer of 2023 after two medical experts found he suffered from dementia and a judge ruled that he was incompetent to stand trial.
McCarrick appeared remotely via Zoom for that court hearing. He showed no emotion when a court clerk told him the case was dismissed. Dressed in a gray sweater vest over a white shirt, he sat hunched over a table in a room at his assisted living facility.
The criminal charges stemming from the wedding reception at Wellesley College went back to 1974.
At the time, McCarrick was visiting from New York City where he was a monsignor and secretary to a cardinal and lived in the rectory attached to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, court documents said.
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McCarrick had been a close friend to the 16-year-old accuser’s family, and had abused the boy since he was 11, often accompanying the family on vacations, court records said. The boy told prosecutors McCarrick also abused him at a location in Arlington and at hotels in Newton.
During the boy’s brother’s wedding reception, McCarrick told the boy his father wanted them to “have a talk” because the teen had been acting out mischievously and had not been attending church, a police report said.
The accuser told police that McCarrick molested him while they walked around the campus and then took him to a small room, closed the blinds, and told him “he needed to go to confession.”
McCarrick participated in the 2005 conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, presided over the graveside service for Sen. Ted Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery in 2009.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.