Cardinal Wuerl: Pope Francis accepts resignation of DC's archbishop amid criticism of his handling of abuse claims

Pope Francis on Friday accepted the resignation of Washington's archbishop, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, a trusted papal ally who has become a symbol of many Catholics for what they view as the church's defensive and weak response to clerical sex abuse.

But even so, it is becoming one of the highest-profile prelates to step down in a year of prominent abuse scandals, Pope Francis offered the cardinal a gentle landing, praising him in a letter and allowing him to stay on as "apostolic administrator" in the Washington archdiocese until a successor was found.

In his letter, Francis suggested that he had accepted his resignation reluctantly, and said he saw in the cardinal's request "the heart of a shepherd." Francis did not criticize his handling of abuse cases, and wrote that he had "sufficient elements" to defend his actions.

"However, your nobility has not helped you," Francis wrote. "Of this, I am proud and thank you."

[Wuerl’s handling of sexual abuse now imperils his legacy as a reformer]

The Vatican's announcement about Wuerl, 77, first suggested he would urge Francis to accept his resignation. For Wuerl, the request to resign was a dramatic turnaround for the guarded, by-the-book cleric – and it underscored the anger he faced in the aftermath of a detailed Pennsylvania grand jury report about his handling of abuse cases during his 18-year tenure as the Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

But Friday, some Catholics said that Francis – with his message about his decision – was overly protective of an ally and overlooking the seriousness of the cardinal's case. In Washington, DC spokesperson said that it will remain in the powerful Congregation of Bishops, the section of the Roman Curia that helps to pick bishops.

"It's very disappointing," said David Clohessy, the national director of Survivors Network for Abused by Priests (SNAP). "This continues a long, long pattern in the church hierarchy: a refusal to admit what is so clear to the rest of us. Wuerl is guilty of serious wrongdoing. You can claim other bishops are even worse, and there is some truth to that. But the simple fact is that he endangered children. "

[Abuse settlement with Wuerl’s name on it raised more questions]

Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania and its office in August released a grand jury investigation that detailed Wuerl's actions on abuse allegations, said that the report made clear that Wuerl "is engaged in the coverup."

While Wuerl sometimes handled the case well, Shapiro said during a meeting with members of the Washington Post editorial board, "This is not a balancing act … You do not get a mulligan when it comes to passing predator priests around."

In the archdiocese of Washington, parishioners who had organized protests calling for their resignation reacted with relief but also further dealt with. "Said Jack Devlin," said Jack Devlin, an organizer of one of the most dramatic displays of lost confidence in the United States – when more than 40 schoolteachers stood outside the annual back-to-school Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate

Devlin, a Catholic school teacher, said Francis's letter to the trustworthiness of church leadership. "When it comes to child abuse, this is not like, 'Oops, I messed up.' These are kids we're talking about," he said. "The way Francis Pope worded it, it was how you made somebody making a little mistake. This is not a little mistake. "

[Catholic clergyman said he would refuse to participate in Mass with Wuerl]

In a statement, Wuerl said the pope's decision to accept his resignation would permit the local church "to move forward."

"Apologize and ask for forgiveness," Wuerl said.

The cardinal's exit follows the course of his realm.

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for child sex abuse. McCarrick was Wuerl's D.C. predecessor, and the suspension quickly led Catholics to wonder what Wuerl knew. Then came the public release of the 900-page report by the Pennsylvania grand jury detailing priest sexual abuse in six dioceses, which painted itself as inconsistent in its handling of sexual abuse.

Lastly, on Aug. 25 to form Vatican ambassador accused Wuerl – along with popes Benedict and Francis – of knowing McCarrick was dangerous but still allowing him to function as one of the highest clerics.

Wuerl has gone to the post since the grand jury, but through his spokesman Ed McFadden has defended his record. Wuerl held a series of meetings in the past week with his priests, and some who attended the event.

Francis Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, goal Wuerl's removal – following McCarrick's resignation in July – represents a new era of accountability for top church leaders accused of mishandling or covering up clergy sex abuse .

While hundreds of priest-abusers have been removed in recent decades, the bishops and cardinals responsible for overseeing them almost never have, and Catholics in 2018 have been showing signs of being fed up with the status quo. They've been openly outraged, organizing protests, demanding resignations and threatening to withhold their money from the church.

Werl has been denied knowing about any allegations against McCarrick before June, when McCarrick was suspended after church officials in New York found credible an allegation he groped an altar boy ago. He also pushed back on the grand jury report, saying he did everything he could under the laws and norms of times past. He has asked parishioners in a public talk to forgive his "errors in judgment" in handling sexual abuse allegations while he was a bishop in Pittsburgh.

It was in a way to a surprising career-end for Wuerl, a meticulous manager who was a controversial and controversial speaker and a member of the Vatican's powerful bishop-picking committee. To be used in the arena of sex abuse, it has been found that pioneering in the church – advocating in the 1980s for victims and concluding that pedophilia was not curable .

Yet the explosive grand jury report offered an alternative picture of Wuerl, one unfamiliar to younger Catholics. The report, which powerfully revived the topic of Catholic clergy abuse, focused on several cases in the diocese of Pittsburgh, which Wuerl led from 1988 to 2006. have done more for victims.

Despite Wuerl's previous efforts on abuse, even going to the Vatican to press for reform, the report says, "We have been inconsistent in handling abusive preaching in our own dioceses. "Wuerl's statements had been meaningless without any action," the report read. An investigative story published in The Post in late August echoed the grand jury report's findings in more detail.

Wuerl's name in the summer of 2018 also became associated – fairly or unfairly – with McCarrick, his predecessor as D.C.'s Catholic leader. McCarrick was suspended in June on the heels of an altar boy, and a few weeks later resigned from the college of cardinals, the first U.S. cardinal in history to do so. With McCarrick's misunderstandings and misunderstandings, McCarrick's misunderstandings and misunderstandings, and his beliefs in the field of psychology. Wuerl denied he did.

Wuerl's defenders say he's been caught up in scandal unfairly during a bitterly polarized era in the church, and that he has always been a leader on sexual abuse – even as church leaders conceded his past actions would never have gone muster in 2018.

They also note his bureaucratic successes in keeping the dioceses where he worked, including all of their social service efforts, in which Americans are fleeing institutional religion. And he has been praised for his commitment to a middle ground on divisive topics including abortion and homosexuality.

"Knowing what I know about Donald Wuerl, and knowing what I know about the leadership he provided. He was actually the solution, "said Dennis Roddy, a longtime columnist and political consultant in the Pittsburgh area. He has written about the powerful impact of Catholic culture and ethnic tribalism that he says still endures.

In late-September, John Carr, a longtime top lobbyist for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, who is now at Georgetown University, published an essay in the Jesuit journal. understood why Wuerl needed to step down.

"Cardinal Donald Wuerl is also a good friend, a leader who was served in many important ways," Carr wrote. "I think it was better than dealing with sexual abuse in years past, but that was not good enough."

Wuerl became a priest at the age of 26, in 1966 in Pittsburgh, his hometown. He rose quickly in the church, becoming an assistant to Bishop John Wright, who became a cardinal in Rome, giving him entrance to the Vatican at a young age. Wright was in a wheelchair at the time, and since it was his assistant, the younger priest was a rare non-cardinal present inside the conclave that elected Pope John Paul II in the late 1970s.

Wuerl's focus has been educating, including modernizing seminaries and writing books. He was plunged in the late 1980s into church culture wars – and earned a name to a man – when the Vatican sent him to Raymond Hunthausen. The Vatican Hunthausen, a peace activist, with the force of faith and the rule of law.

Catholics to celebrate Catholics to celebrate Catholics to celebrate Catholics to celebrate Catholics to celebrate the Catholics of Catholics and hospitals Catholic hospitals to perform contraceptive sterilizations.

After an investigation, the Vatican appointed in 1985 to be auxiliary – or assistant – bishop, and had him take over many administrative functions from Hunthausen.

It was hugely controversial and controversial, to that time, to be associated with the more conservative wing of the church. "The unwanted bishop," is how Wuerl is described in a biography of him by Ann Rogers and Mike Aquilina.

Experts on Wuerl and the U.S. church are more committed to bureaucratic structures than they have been driven by a conservative ideology. Wuerl is highly disciplined; he sits, dresses and stands impeccably and speaks in a slow, deliberate professorial tone. Some D.C. seminarians said his nickname was "Teflon Don" because they felt it was too dangerous to ever make a mistake.

Hunthausen's authority was restored in the late 1980s and was felt to be hometown of Pittsburgh as bishop.

Wuerl maintained his reputation as a skilled administrator. He was known as "the teaching bishop." He hosted a weekly cable television show and compiled a best-selling book of Catholic teachings. He was also known in Pittsburgh as a behind-the-scenes bridge-builder, someone who preferred pressing quietly in private to making demands in public.

His local resume changed early in his Pittsburgh tenure, when a priest named Anthony Cipolla was removed from ministry amid allegations he'd abused several boys. Cipolla appealed, and in 1993 the Vatican asked Wuerl reinstate him. Wuerl refused, taking the fight to the Vatican Supreme Court. He later won.

The Cipolla case set the parameters for Wuerl's early reputation on the topic of abuse. Victims praised him and some feel Wuerl's willingness to challenge the Vatican.

In 2006, he was installed as the archbishop of Washington, one of the country's most prominent spots, partly because it's the seat of government, but also because many major Catholic Church institutions are in the DC region – the bishops' conference, Catholic University (the bishops' university), the Vatican's US Representative and Major Relief Organizations, Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities USA.

In Washington, Wuerl has been praised as a successful if emotionally distant leader, pulling the archdiocese's finances into better order, working out of the city to shift some closing.

Despite the Hunthausen period earlier in his career, Wuerl in D.C. became known for holding the middle ground in a bolting culture to the extremes. He adopted the affirmative position of McCarrick on the question of whether politicians who support the right to abortion can receive communion. He has also adopted Francis' welcoming tone on gay issues, something of a public shift to the issue of unmarried couples who worked for the archdiocese. in DC

As a close adviser to Pope Francis, Wuerl has often been painted by conservative Catholics as too liberal – someone making excuses for Francis.

Focus on Wuerl revved up in June 2018, when the Vatican suspended McCarrick, and two New Jersey dioceses revealed that they had come to legal settlements with adult accusers, one in 2005 and one in 2007. Wuerl became Washington's archbishop in 2006.

Wuerl had been set to leave office soon anyway, because of his age. Bishops are required at age 75 to submit their resignation, and Wuerl did so on Nov. 12, 2015. It's customary for bishops to stay at the choice of the pope, and Wuerl in mid-2018 was not expected to go anywhere fast because he remained busy with Francis on various things. In an interview with the Post in March 2018, Wuerl said his most recent communication from the Vatican said he was reappointed until he is 80. He is 77 and will be 78 on Nov. 12, 2018.

His last major endeavor, March 2001 of a pastoral letter – or teaching – meant to tell D.C.-area Catholics how to implement Francis' vision of inclusion. Werl's letter to his archdiocese's 630,000 Catholics and their clergy, to their unease and social isolation is rampant.

He even appeared to leave the door open to priests and regular Catholics to the Communion is an option in some cases – even for people who do not seem to qualify. Catholics, he wrote in March, can not be held guilty for sticking to the teaching if they did not have strong Catholic education and counseling. Also, he said, the church needs to welcome people who are working to be closer to the church and its teachings.

Asked during an interview with The Post that March, which defines the D.C. period of his career,

"The focus for me is spiritual, pastoral and a teacher of the faith." "I am a spiritual leader, not someone who is engaged in the political life," he said. .

It has been criticized that Francis has received that he is not doing so much. One of the primary criticisms of Francis has been responsible for the subject.

"I do not see that. He's been very clear, consistent, he's a committee together, "Wuerl said. ". . It seems to me to be glitch – for example when he says: 'You know you need to have proof,' it gets exaggerated, "Wuerl said. "It gets inserted into some story line that it's not as committed as it should be. I do not see that story line as valid. In the absence of tolerance. I see him saying we will not reassign priests. But if there is something that comes to the fore, then we get this story that somehow the pope is backing away from his commitment. "