Free Republic

Wuerl I, Wuerl II and Wuerl III Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Donald Cardinal Wuerl as archbishop of Washington, nearly three years after Wuerl submitted it upon turning 75. Far from a dismissal or firing of any kind, Wuerl and Francis managed to turn the action into a retirement party.  In the pope's "beautiful letter" (Wuerl's words this morning in a 6:09 a.m. listserv email) to the outgoing archbishop, Wuerl was praised by Francis: "You have sufficient elements to 'justify' your actions and distinguish what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to...

Why is this accused gay predator still running the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception? The other day I received a call from a former Catholic University of America student who recounted episodes of sexual harassment that he suffered at the hands of Monsignor Walter Rossi, the Gay Mafioso whom pederast Cardinal Theodore McCarrick appointed to run the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in 2005. Rossi succeeded another accused gay harasser, (then monsignor, later bishop) Michael Bransfield who is currently under investigation for preying upon men. So in Rossi’s rise we see another case of gay...

From The Season Of Healing Department - Bathhouse Romper Functioning As Priest In DC Is the following account typical of what we might expect in Cardinal Wuerl's "season of healing"?  George Neumayr smoked this out.  Seven years ago in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, a Carmelite priest was arrested after he touched the buttocks of an 18-year old man.  The perp-priest's name is Father Emmanuel Betasso (legally Patrick Anthony Betasso).  He admitted to doing so for a "cheap thrill".  He was 45 years old at the time and had just been named pastor of a parish - and was teaching a...

Rejects calls to leave post, offers prayer and listening sessions instead WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. is refusing to step down after being implicated in the massive cover-up of clerical sex abuse. In a Thursday letter to the priests of the archdiocese, Wuerl is calling for a "season of healing" to address the sex abuse crisis. He notes the calls for him to step down, but is choosing to remain in spite of them. In his letter, he explained that in a Sept. 3 "prayer and discernment" meeting with his priests, "Among the many observations was...

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington has denied a report that he was informed about restrictions apparently placed by the Vatican upon his predecessor, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick. “Cardinal Wuerl did not receive documentation or information from the Holy See specific to Cardinal McCarrick’s behavior or any of the prohibitions on his life and ministry suggested by Archbishop Vigano,” the cardinal’s spokesman, Ed McFadden, told CNA.On Aug. 25, Archbishop Carlo Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016, released a “testimony,” alleging that in 2009 or 2010, after receiving reports of habitual sexual misconduct on the part of McCarrick,...

Catholic journalist George Neumayr is responding with skepticism over Cdl. Donald Wuerl's claims that he did not know about his predecessor's reputation for sexually abusing seminarians. Author of The Political Pope, Neumayr told Church Militant in a recent interview that he knew about ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick's abuse of seminarians for a long time, but no one listened to him when he tried to make it public. "I knew that he was a gay predator," Neumayr said, "and I had talked about this openly for many, many years. Most people didn't care. I even put it in print." He said that when the...

As Bishop of Pittsburgh, Donald Wuerl allowed pedophile priests to continue in active ministry, according to an explosive grand jury report released by the Pennsylvania Attorney General on Tuesday. This and more was revealed in the damning report on decades of sex abuse and how it was covered up in six Pennsylvania dioceses. One-third of the priests named as accused of sex abuse in the report came from the Diocese of Pittsburgh. As Archbishop of Washington, though, now-Cardinal Wuerl did not afford the same mercy to a priest who upheld the Catholic faith and suffered a media firestorm for it. In...

A grand jury report released August 14, 2018 revealed Church officials in six Pennsylvania dioceses engaged in an decades-long “systematic” cover-up of priestly sex abuse. 301 priests were found to have abused more than 1,000 children.Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who served as bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 until 2006, is mentioned by name more than 200 times in the grand jury report. Wuerl is the current archbishop of Washington, D.C., the successor of now-disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.As bishop of Pittsburgh, Wuerl knew about predatory priests and shuffled them to different dioceses, putting more children at risk. He wrote to the...

In 1972, Pope Paul VI warned that "the smoke of Satan has entered the Church of God." We see that smoke throughout the report from a Pennsylvania grand jury, which alleges that more than 300 priests abused more than 1,000 children in six Pennsylvania dioceses -- including 99 priests from the Diocese of Pittsburgh, which was led for 18 years by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, now archbishop of Washington. How bad was the abuse? The report notes that "during the course of this investigation, the Grand Jury uncovered a ring of predatory priests operating within the [Pittsburgh] Diocese who shared intelligence...

Donald Wuerl — the cardinal-archbishop of Washington, D.C. — must go. The kingpin of the American hierarchy — a man who over the decades has carefully and meticulously cultivated an image of reformer — has now been exposed as a fraud, just as guilty as scores of other bishops in the U.S. who hid and shuffled around homosexual predator priests and concelaed them from law enforcement officials. The long-awaited bombshell Pennsylvania Grand Jury report is out, released in dramatic fashion — live streamed by the attorney general's office — and Donald Wuerl has now been revealed as one of the major players in the...

A flashy and expensive white Mercedes rolled out from the four-car garage of Donald Wuerl around 10:05 PM on December 11. I was there in the parking lot of Queen of the Americas parish at 2200 California street in the luxurious neighborhood known commonly as Embassy Row. The Catholic cardinal of the nation’s capital since 2006, Wuerl has long had a reputation for high living — despite his exalted status as the most powerful American prelate in what the media calls the “humble church” of Pope Francis. (In his previous posting as a bishop in Pittsburgh, he lived in a...

The archbishop of Washington says that while the church is welcoming of everyone, including gay people, he fears the possibility of the church’s position that marriage is only for a man and a woman will be seen as bigotry or hate speech. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said the church can be welcoming of gay people who are legally married without recognizing those marriages within the church itself. …