Topic: Theodore McCarrick

Theodore Edgar McCarrick (born July 7, 1930) is an American Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 2001.

An only child, Theodore McCarrick was born in New York City to Theodore E. and Margaret T. (née McLaughlin) McCarrick. His father was a ship captain who died from tuberculosis when Theodore was three years old, and his mother then worked at a car factory in the Bronx. As a child, he served as an altar boy at the Church of the Incarnation in Washington Heights.

After attending Fordham Preparatory School, he studied in Switzerland for a year before returning to the United States and attending Fordham University. He later entered St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, from where he obtained a Bachelor's degree in philosophy (1954) and a Master's in history (1958).