THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Pennsylvania priest abuse report
faults Cardinal Donald Wuerl


HARRISBURG, Pa., August 14, 2018 (AP) — The latest on a grand jury report on clergy abuse in six Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses (all times local):

4:15 p.m.
A Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse faults Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former longtime bishop of Pittsburgh, over his handling of abusive priests.

The report says Wuerl approved transfers for priests instead of removing them from ministry, oversaw inadequate church investigations and concealed information when priests were reported to law enforcement.

The report also says he advised parishes not to publicly announce or acknowledge complaints, and offered financial support to priests who were accused and later resigned.

Wuerl, who leads the Washington archdiocese and is one of the highest-profile cardinals in the United States, disputes some of the allegations in the report.

He says in a statement Tuesday that he “acted with diligence, with concern for the victims and to prevent future acts of abuse.”

2:25 p.m.
A Pennsylvania grand jury says its investigation of clergy sexual abuse identified more than 1,000 child victims.

The grand jury report released Tuesday says that number comes from records in six Roman Catholic dioceses. The grand jury says it believes the “real number” of abused children might be “in the thousands” since some records were lost and victims were afraid to come forward. The report says more than 300 clergy committed the abuse over a period of decades.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro says the probe found a systematic cover-up by senior church officials in Pennsylvania and at the Vatican.

2:10 p.m.
Pennsylvania officials have released a landmark grand jury report that identifies more than 300 “predator priests” who molested children in six dioceses.

It also accuses church leaders of taking steps to cover up the abuse. The report emerged from one of the nation’s most exhaustive investigations of clergy sexual abuse.

The report echoes the findings of many earlier church investigations around the country in its description of widespread sexual abuse by clergy and church officials’ concealment of it.

The grand jury scrutinized abuse allegations in dioceses that minister to more than half the state’s 3.2 million Catholics.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former longtime bishop of Pittsburgh who now leads the Washington archdiocese, said ahead of the report’s release that he expected to be criticized in it.

9:30 a.m.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, is defending himself ahead of a forthcoming grand jury report investigating child sexual abuse in six of Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses.

He says the report will be critical of some of his actions as Pittsburgh’s bishop.

Wuerl wrote to priests late Monday, ahead of Tuesday’s release of the report. He says he acted diligently to protect children while bishop of Pittsburgh for 18 years through 2006.

Court records say the report identifies more than 300 “predator priests” and that grand jurors accuse church leaders of brushing aside victims to protect abusers and church institutions.

Wuerl is already dealing with allegations that a predecessor, disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, allegedly sexually abused boys and adult seminarians. He said last month that archdiocesan records showed no complaints about McCarrick.

1 a.m.
Time is ticking down to decide what information to black out in a forthcoming grand jury report investigating child sexual abuse in six of Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses.

The state Supreme Court set a Tuesday deadline to publicly release a redacted version of the roughly 900-page report.

Some clergy members named in the document say they’re wrongfully accused and are fighting to challenge the allegations against them. The high court says it’ll consider their claims in September, but in the meantime ordered the report released with the identities of those clergy members concealed.

Court records say the report identifies more than 300 “predator priests” and that grand jurors accuse church leaders of brushing aside victims to protect abusers and church institutions.

Cardinal Wuerl named 200 times
in Pennsylvania grand jury report,
responds to criticism
by Ed Condon


Washington D.C., Aug 14, 2018 (CNA)- Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and the former Bishop of Pittsburgh, has been named more than 200 times in a Pennsylvania grand jury report, released Aug. 14, after an 18-month investigation into historic allegations of sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses.

The cardinal released a statement in response to the report, underscoring the gravity of the sexual abuse for the Church and the real need for repentance for past failures.

“As I have made clear throughout my more than 30 years as a bishop, the sexual abuse of children by some members of the Catholic Church is a terrible tragedy, and the Church can never express enough our deep sorrow and contrition for the abuse, and for the failure to respond promptly and completely,” the cardinal said.

In total, 99 priests from Pittsburgh were named in the report, 32 priests were referenced by the grand jury report in relation to Cardinal Wuerl’s time as bishop. Of these, 19 involved new cases or allegations which arose during his 18 years in charge of the diocese, during the years 1988-2006.

Of the 19 cases which arose during Wuerl’s time as bishop, 18 were removed from ministry immediately. The other cases Wuerl addressed in Pittsburgh principally concerned actions and allegations that arose during the reign of his predecessor, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.

Several of these cases inherited from Cardinal Bevilacqua’s time were subject to the report’s most stringent criticisms.

In one case, an abuser-priest left the Diocese of Pittsburgh in 1966, following allegations of abuse. He was allowed to seek ministry in dioceses in California and Nevada. The report says Wuerl authorized him to move from Los Angeles to the diocese of Reno-Las Vegas in 1991, but sources familiar with the Pittsburgh case said that Wuerl was unaware of the 1966 allegations at the time.

A further allegation, concerning past actions by the same priest, was made in 1994 at which time Wuerl immediately informed the dioceses where the priest had been living.

In another case highlighted by the report, Wuerl agreed to a settlement with an abuse victim in his first weeks as bishop of Pittsburgh in 1988. The victim received a total of $900,000 and signed a confidentiality agreement - such agreements were once common in settlements and have been heavily criticized as a means of silencing victims.

While acknowledging that the report contained specific criticisms of his time in Pittsburgh, Wuerl defended his record of handling sexual abuse allegations.

“While I understand this report may be critical of some of my actions, I believe the report confirms that I acted with diligence, with concern for the victims and to prevent future acts of abuse. I sincerely hope that a just assessment of my actions, past and present, and my continuing commitment to the protection of children will dispel any notions otherwise made by this report.”

The report also specifically criticized Wuerl for maintaining financial support for priests who had been removed from ministry, although providing that support is a canonical obligation for bishops. Many dioceses, including those covered by the report, have found themselves obligated to continue providing minimum benefits and support for priests.

Sources close to the cardinal also point out that the grand jury report does not distinguish between proven incidents of abuse and other allegations, saying that the report presumes that any priest accused of abuse should have been permanently removed from ministry, whether the allegation is proven or not. That assumption, they say, is not consistent with canonical norms on the subject.

As the most senior sitting bishop to be named in the report, and having served for so long as the head of a diocese as prominent as Pittsburgh, it was widely expected that Wuerl would be singled out for special attention by the report, and by the state’s Attorney General, Josh Shapiro.

Perhaps the most eye-catching allegation against Wuerl contained in the more than 1,000 pages released is the use of the phrase “circle of secrecy.” These words, the report claims, “were his own words for the church’s child sex abuse cover up.” This allegation is vehemently denied by both the diocese of Pittsburgh and the cardinal.

In an official response released with the report, the Diocese of Pittsburgh said that the phrase “circle of secrecy” appears in paperwork related to the request of a particular priest to return to ministry, and that it was used to make clear that there could be no “circle of secrecy” about the priest’s past problems. The diocese also says that the handwriting in which the phrase is written cannot be definitively attributed to anyone, including Wuerl.

Ed McFadden, spokesman for the cardinal, said that “the handwriting does not belong to then-Bishop Wuerl as the writers of the Report mistakenly assumed. Indeed, the cardinal confirmed the handwriting is not his, and confirmed he neither wrote nor used the phrase while serving as Bishop of Pittsburgh. When the Cardinal’s legal counsel informed the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office about this error – prior to the release of the report – the Attorney General and his Senior Deputy refused to acknowledge the mistake and refused to take any steps to correct the dramatic use and misattribution of the phrase in the report.”

McFadden called the report’s attribution of the phrase “another example that in factual ways, large and small, the Attorney General’s office was more concerned with getting this report out than getting it right. Such a focus detracts from the shared goals of protection and healing.”

In a letter sent to the priests of the Washington archdiocese on Aug. 13, Wuerl wrote that he was shocked at having to confront allegations of abuse almost from the beginning of his ministry in Pittsburgh.

“I cannot fully express the dismay and anger I felt, when as a newly installed Bishop of Pittsburgh in 1988, I learned about the abuse some survivors experienced in my diocese,” he said.

The cardinal said that the experience of meeting with victims of abuse “urged me to develop quickly a “zero tolerance” policy for clergy who committed such abuse,” and that he put in place procedures to ensure allegations were addressed “fairly and forthrightly.”

In his written testimony to the grand jury, Wuerl recounted that in his first months as Bishop of Pittsburgh he had to meet with two brothers who had been victims of abuse. Wuerl said he was profoundly affected by the experience and came away with “a permanent resolve that this should never happen again.”

In 1989, Wuerl established a diocesan committee to evaluate policies for responding to abuse allegations. This committee grew to become the Diocesan Review Board, nearly a decade before the Dallas Charter called for every diocese to have such a body.

In his letter to the priests of Washington, he said that he had tried to live up to his own zero-tolerance standards.

“The diocese [of Pittsburgh] investigated all allegations of child sexual abuse during my tenure there and admitted or substantiated allegations of child sexual abuse resulted in appropriate action including the removal of the priest from ministry,” Wuerl wrote to the Washington presbyterate.

What constitutes “appropriate action” is something that has changed in the years since the sexual abuse crisis at the turn of the millennium and the formation of the Dallas Charter by the United States bishops.

As Bishop of Pittsburgh, Wuerl says he implemented of a policy that formally encouraged Catholics making complaints to also report them directly to law enforcement agencies, and sometimes informed civil authorities himself, even against the express wishes of the person making the allegations.

Of the 19 priests whose original allegations were handled by Wuerl, 18 were immediately removed from pastoral assignments and a kept away from any further contact with children.

But, when allegations could not be satisfactorily established, many of these were given administrative positions in the diocesan chancery, something which would be considered inappropriate under current standards. Unlike the worst examples of earlier abuse cases in dioceses like Boston and Los Angeles, Wuerl is adamant that he never moved an accused or suspected abuser from parish to parish, or left them in parish ministry.

Indeed, from his first year in Pittsburgh, Wuerl acted publicly on issues related to clerical sexual abuse, even in the face of Church opposition.

In 1988, the year he arrived in Pittsburgh, Wuerl removed Fr. Anthony Cipolla from ministry following accusations the priest had molested a teenage boy. Following appeals by Cipolla, the Vatican ordered that the priest be returned to ministry but Wuerl categorically refused, flying to Rome and presenting evidence and arguments in person to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. Rome eventually reversed its position and upheld Wuerl’s decision.

While cases of suspected abuse since 2002 have been handled according to the USCCB’s “Essential Norms,” the Cipolla case served as an important template in the 1990’s, making it easier for other bishops to remove priests accused of abuse from active ministry.

Coming hard on the heels of the revelations about Archbishop McCarrick, who preceded Wuerl in Washington, D.C., the cardinal has found himself on the receiving end of very pointed and sustained criticism. Appearing on “CBS This Morning” ahead of the report’s release, he was pointedly asked if he had any intention of resigning. He is likely to face renewed scrutiny and even more difficult questions in the weeks ahead.

The ff was written and published before the Grand Jury report was made public:

Wuerl is lying - and why
Non-members have stood idly by and allowed the Gay Mafia
to spread its tentacles throughout the Church
by George Neumayr'

August 13, 2018

In the immediate aftermath of the catastrophic McCarrick scandal, one American cardinal's denial of any knowledge of McCarrick's predatory behavior stands out: "Our offices are aware only of the same information regarding these allegations that you are seeing in media reports."

That was Cdl. Donald Wuerl's first response to the mushrooming scandal, made through an intermediary tellingly. No one, of course, is buying it. After all, in order to believe Wuerl's claim that he knew nothing about McCarrick's misbehavior, one would have to swallow the following whoppers:
- that Wuerl never read psychotherapist Richard Sipe's accounts of McCarrick's gay predation, which go back at least a decade and were widely circulated on the internet (Sipe is well known to the American hierarchy)
- that the papal nuncio to the United States, who had been apprised of settlements New Jersey archdioceses reached with McCarrick's victims, never breathed a word of these settlements to Wuerl
- that the Church's insurance company, which presumably oversaw the decision to settle, never consulted with Wuerl about McCarrick's record in Washington, D.C.
- that not a single D.C. priest or archdiocesan official who knew about McCarrick's reputation or the settlements ever breathed a word of these matters to Wuerl.

Wuerl's claim of ignorance only raises questions; it doesn't answer any of them. One obvious point of inquiry for any future panel investigating the McCarrick scandal would be: Was it really possible for the New Jersey archdioceses and its insurance company to evaluate the prudence of settling with McCarrick's victims without holding meetings with D.C. archdiocesan officials?
Without examining McCarrick's personnel file in the D.C. archdiocesan office? Without first finding out if that behavior continued during his tenure in D.C.?

After all, how would the insurance company have gauged the need to settle without that crucial information? Presumably, McCarrick was denying it all. Why would the insurance company have settled if the dispute amounted to a he-said, he-said affair, without any later misconduct during his tenure in D.C.?

Any independent panel would need to examine all documents related to the settlement talks. One suspects that those documents would betray evidence of D.C. archdiocesan participation. To take just one example, how did McCarrick, a D.C. archdiocesan employee in his retirement, travel up to New Jersey to discuss the matter? Who paid for that? Who went with him? Surely some D.C. archdiocesan officials accompanied him, unless all of this was resolved over the phone, which is highly doubtful. The panel would need to question McCarrick's aides. What did they know? Did they ever discuss McCarrick-related matters with the D.C. chancery?

Wuerl's denial depends on an utterly ludicrous picture, that of a hermetically sealed scandal leading to hermetically sealed settlements. That never happens in major institutions. It always comes out that a range of people across the affected institution knew about the settlement. That Wuerl didn’t know about the predations of his predecessor is about as likely as Harvey Weinstein's brother and business partner not knowing about the mogul's widely rumored misdeeds.

Then there is the Roman angle: Did nobody at the Vatican tell Wuerl about his predecessor's predations and the settlements to which they led? That strains all credulity. No one has better access to Vatican-held secrets than Wuerl. He is arguably the most powerful cardinal in America and belongs to the Vatican's inner circle.

According to the derelict New Jersey bishops, they informed Vatican officials in Washington, D.C. and Rome about the McCarrick settlements. We are to believe they never passed that information on to Wuerl? Right.

I woke up this last Friday morning to the sad and grimly timed news that Richard Sipe had died. Over the years I talked to Sipe occasionally. I would pepper him with questions about the Gay Mafia in the Catholic Church, a subject he had addressed with great authority in various books and articles. His reporting on the Gay Mafia — much of it deriving from his first-hand experiences as a therapist who worked with troubled priests in the disintegrating, post-1960s Church — was invaluable.

I gather Cdl. Wuerl and other members of the checkered hierarchy breathed a sigh of relief at the news of Sipe's death. Sipe had the goods on them. Or maybe they are muttering to themselves what the French statesman Talleyrand once said after learning of the death of a Turkish ambassador with whom he sparred: "I wonder what he meant by that?"


The company they keep: Wuerl and McCarrick, Ricca and Bergoglio

"Priests have told me that Wuerl is gay," Sipe said to me once during an interview I was conducting for my book, The Political Pope. I had asked Sipe if the Gay Mafia elected Pope Francis. He thought so. We discussed the Msgr. Battista Ricca scandal. Remember that one? It is highly revelant to the McCarrick cover-up and Wuerl's bogus claim that he knew nothing about McCarrick's predatory habits.

Wuerl and Ricca work together on matters related to the Vatican Bank and the administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See. If an independent future panel is assembled to look at the McCarrick scandal — which is a big if — it should focus like a laser beam on the interactions of Wuerl, Ricca and McCarrick.

He who pays the piper calls the tune, and many of the money men of the Church are charter members of the Gay Mafia who have been covering for each other for decades. Non-members of the Gay Mafia have allowed the Gay Mafia to spread its tentacles throughout the Church in part because they are dependent on the fundraising of these charlatans.

Follow the money in the Church — from the McCarrick-founded Papal Foundation (which recently strong-armed its donors for millions given to a crooked hospital in Rome that the Pope and the Gay Mafia wanted bailed out) to the Patrimony of the Holy See — and you will find on that money the fingerprints of the most double-dealing, double-living prelates in the Church.

They understand the purifying and silencing power of raw cash. Their sins are scarlet, but their cash is green — and their cowed colleagues know it. Their sins are scarlet, but their cash is green — and their cowed colleagues know it.

Of course Wuerl knew about McCarrick, just like he knew about Msgr. Ricca, his colleague at the Vatican bank, in whose affairs Wuerl has long been immersed. Ricca rose to the highest ecclesiastical position at the Vatican Bank despite an amazingly sordid history.

Veteran Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister has established beyond any reasonable doubt that Ricca's scandalous bio includes an affair with a member of the Swiss Guard, a beating he received at a gay bar and an incident involving the discovery by firemen of Ricca trapped in an elevator with a young male prostitute.

Wuerl and McCarrick were thrilled when Pope Francis rode to the rescue of Ricca. Recall that Pope Francis's signature line — "Who am I to judge?" — was in response to a question about Ricca. Those words emboldened McCarrick, who enjoyed an astonishing final act under Francis.

McCarrick felt so confident that he started bragging about how he had lobbied for Bergoglio's election after a powerful "Roman" had pressed him to spread the word to his peers about the Argentine prelate. Who was that powerful Roman? That's another question for the yet-to-be-formed panel. In all likelihood, he is one of the Gay Mafia's chief puppeteers.

Richard Sipe, alas, didn't oppose a gay clergy, just a secretive one. But his warnings about McCarrick will remain a monument to his honest testimony. I had wanted to talk to Sipe about the McCarrick-Wuerl cover-up over the last month, but couldn't reach him.

I never found Sipe's proposed left-wing reforms persuasive in the slightest — in fact, they would just make the scandal permanent by gaying the Church formally — but I always respected his reporting on the existence of the Gay Mafia and admired his fearlessness. May he rest in peace.