Cardinal Agostino Cacciavillan, who served as pro-nuncio to the United States from 1990 to 1998, told Catholic News Service Oct. 29 that he received a phone call from a woman in the months preceding St. John Paul II's visit to the United States in 1995.

"I remember in 1994, during the preparation of the papal visit to New York, Newark and Baltimore," Cardinal Cacciavillan said, "I received a telephone call" at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C.

According to the 93-year-old retired papal diplomat, the caller feared there would be a "media scandal if the pope goes to Newark," Archbishop McCarrick's diocese, because of "voices, voices (rumors) about McCarrick's behavior with seminarians."

"It was not a formal complaint, but the expression of a concern," he said.

Cardinal Cacciavillan said that he took the matter to the then-archbishop of New York, Cardinal John J. O'Connor, because he was "the closest bishop. No one better than the archbishop of New York would know what was happening in the Archdiocese of Newark."

Cardinal O'Connor carried out an "investigation, an inquiry," he said, and told the nuncio that "there was no obstacle to the visit of the pope to Newark."

Cardinal Cacciavillan described Cardinal O'Connor, who died in 2000, as a "very competent person," and the retired nuncio said he had no reason to doubt the reliability of Cardinal O'Connor's inquiry.

Asked why he thought the phone call warranted an inquiry, Cardinal Cacciavillan responded, "I thought it was something important."

Cardinal Cacciavillan told CNS that while he encountered Archbishop McCarrick frequently during the eight years he served as nuncio, he never spoke to Archbishop McCarrick about the rumors nor did he report the rumors to the Vatican.

In fact, he said, the first time he spoke to any Vatican official about the rumors was Oct. 7 during a visit with Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. Earlier that day, the Canadian cardinal had released an open letter responding to allegations by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, another former nuncio, that Pope Francis had known for years about Archbishop McCarrick's behavior and had done nothing about it until accusations were made about him sexually abusing boys.

Interviewed in his Vatican apartment, Cardinal Cacciavillan denied reports that he ordered then-Archbishop McCarrick to sell his beach house in Sea Girt, New Jersey, the house where he allegedly brought groups of seminarians and would have one share a bed with him. Archbishop McCarrick sold the house in 1997 while Cardinal Cacciavillan was still nuncio.

Cardinal Cacciavillan was not mentioned in the long statement Archbishop Vigano published in August alleging that complaints about Archbishop McCarrick were mishandled for years; the statement did, however, mention steps that Cardinal Cacciavillan's successors -- Archbishops Gabriel Montalvo and Pietro Sambi -- tried to take.

"The case of McCarrick came out especially after he was transferred to Washington" in late 2000 and after St. John Paul named him a cardinal in February 2001, Cardinal Cacciavillan said.