In the week since a Pennsylvania grand jury reported on child sex abuse by Catholic priests, Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s reputation is suffered irreparable damage.
It remains unclear whether his pledge to remain in office and not resign as Archbishop of Washington, DC is tenable.
Over the course of the past week, the Cardinal’s upcoming book has been canceled by the publisher, he abruptly pulled out of his role as keynote speaker at a major global meeting in Ireland, Diocesan officials are considering taking his name off a high school in his hometown of Pittsburgh, where he served as Bishop for 18 years before becoming the Archbishop of Washington in 2006.
On Monday, vandals covered his name which appears on the high school sign in red spray paint.
The Cardinal has become the target of what amounts to a watershed moment brought upon the Church in the wake of a Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report which chronicles decades of sexual abuse of minors by Clergymen and the willful strategy Bishops employed in covering up those crimes.
Unlike the quiet protests and longings for change of past decades, Catholics now are demanding accountability.
John Allen, who has written multiple books on the Vatican and the U.S. Church and now runs the Catholic website Crux observed: “My read is that this crowd is not going to be satisfied with assurances. They want to see something real.”
Cardinal Wuerl’s name appears 200 times in the PA Grand Jury Report alleging that he covered up abuse cases and transferred abusing Priests from parish to parish within and outside the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
The Catholic faithful appear to have had their fill of the fact that Bishops and Cardinals have not been held accountable for moving abusers around and continuing to protect and pay them, favoring protection of the institutional Church over devastated victims.
Cardinal Wuerl’s spokesman, Ed McFadden, and his attorney, Mickey Pohl, said the grand jury report has painted the Cardinal unfairly, when he was simply following the norms of the day — whether that was coming to confidential settlements with victims or not reporting certain complaints to police.
“The report intentionally seeks to create the worst possible outcome in media coverage for someone like His Eminence,” McFadden said.
The Archdiocese of Washington issued a press release stating that the Cardinal has called for a meeting with the Priests of the Archdiocese on Monday of next week.
The same release reiterates Cardinal Wuerl’s insistence that he will not resign.
We shall see what happens in the days ahead.
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