Pope Francis accepts the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl today as Archbishop of Washington

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl The Vatican on Friday issued a Pope's letter to Wuerl in which the pontiff confirms his acceptance of Wuerl's resignation and congratulates him for placing the interests of the church in the service of his personal defense against the claims that he has made. ;he protects. abusive priests.

Wuerl, who led the diocese of Pittsburgh for 18 years, was involved in a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report and had more and more calls to resign for allegations that he had been hiding for so-called "predatory priests".

The pope asked Wuerl to remain "apostolic administrator of the archdiocese" in Washington until the appointment of his successor. Wuerl was in Washington on Friday morning.

On Labor Day, Wuerl met the priests of his archdiocese. In a letter they sent earlier this month, he expressed his intention to meet the pope about his future. An expert told CBS News at the time that the letter was very unusual, but that a resignation would be even more so.

In the letter, Wuerl said that a decision on his future was "essential" for his archdiocese "to move forward".

The letter arrived the same day that Pope Francis criticized the remarks made during a mass in Rome. He said the bishops were attacked by the "great accuser", another name for Satan.

"It seems that the great accuser has been unleashed," said the pope, adding: "He tries to reveal the sins so that they are visible in order to scandalize the people".

The August Pennsylvania grand jury report revealed that more than 300 Catholic priests had sexually abused more than 1,000 children since 1947. Wuerl had presided over 32 presumed priests in the diocese of Pittsburgh. Of the charges against him, he was reassigned and reinstated.

"Have you ever moved priests quietly?" CBS News correspondent Nikki Battiste interviewed Wuerl in August.

"It was not … it was not our process," Wuerl replied the night before the report was released.

"Do you intend to resign?"

"What I want to talk about is the effort that I have made during my 18 years there." And it was to introduce zero tolerance and. .. any priest against whom there was a credible and proven accusation, that the appropriate measures had been taken, "Wuerl had said. .

Patrick Hornbeck, chair of the theology department at Fordham University in New York, said in September that many people "were looking to see Pope Francis show a degree of leadership on this issue that he had not still demonstrated ".

"I think it's fair to say that the Catholic Church, at least in the United States, is going through a crisis it has not seen for a long time," Hornbeck said.