Cardinal Donald Wuerl grew up in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Mount Washington, where, as a boy, he presided over pretend Masses for his siblings in the family home.
He invested in his education, attending St. Gregory Catholic Seminary in Cincinnati, the Theological College at Catholic University in Washington, the Pontifical North American College in Rome and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome.
While studying in Rome, he witnessed sessions of the historic Second Vatican Council.
He was ordained in 1966 and served as a parish priest at St. Rosalia’s Parish in Greenfield, on staff at the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy and as a secretary to Pittsburgh Bishop John Wright.
When then-Cardinal Wright’s health was failing in 1978, then-Father Wuerl assisted him as a rare non-cardinal allowed into the secret conclave that elected John Paul II as the first non-Italian pope in centuries.
The pontiff later made him an auxiliary bishop in Seattle, where he entered a firestorm. The pope ordered the sitting archbishop to surrender some of his powers to then-Bishop Wuerl.
Outrage ensued, as papal critics assumed Bishop Wuerl was sent to humiliate and crack down on the archbishop, whose liberal approaches to homosexuality, general absolution and contraception offended conservative church leaders.
His short-lived assignment in Seattle was followed by a long assignment as bishop in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, which he led from 1988 through 2006. During his time here, he oversaw a wrenching downsizing of parishes.
He also earned both praise and criticism for removing sexually abusive priests from ministry years before his colleagues made it a policy to do so. That alienated some in the Vatican for a while, but the Wuerl record ultimately fueled a reputation that made him a rumored candidate to take over the scandal-plagued Archdiocese of Boston in 2003.
White-smoke watchers say it’s a longshot for an American to become pope, but if anyone was going to do so, the Vatican-savvy, Italian-fluent Wuerl was touted as the most likely candidate after Pope Benedict XVI retired in 2013.
But his reputation as tough on abuse only set himself up for criticism when a Pennsylvania grand jury in August reported inconsistencies in his record.
Early in his tenure as bishop in Pittsburgh, Cardinal Wuerl bucked a Vatican order to reinstate a priest accused of molesting multiple boys, ultimately winning a reversal. The diocese, under Cardinal Wuerl, also created a review board to evaluate allegations and offer recommendations and tightened some of its policies for handling abuse claims, according to his written response to the grand jury report.
The cardinal later played a critical role in persuading the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to pass a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which mandates that any priest who ever sexually abuses a child can never serve in ministry again. The charter, which grew out of the scandal that erupted in 2002 after the Boston Globe reported on sex abuse and cover-up, calls for the church to cooperate with police, discipline offenders and help victims.
Privately, though, the grand jury report says that children were being sexually abused by clergy members of the Pittsburgh diocese — and that those acts were sometimes buried from public view.
The report criticizes Cardinal Wuerl’s decision to permit re-assignments in the 1990s for the late Rev. Ernest Paone, an accused child molester who had been ministering in Western states with permission from Pittsburgh bishops since the 1960s. The report said Cardinal Wuerl permitted this continue even as the evidence against Paone mounted.
The grand jury report says Wuerl presided over a settlement with two brothers who were abuse victims of a different priest, Richard Zula, that prohibited them from discussing the terms, and it provides a detailed chronology of his negotiations with Father Zula about money the priest would receive from the diocese upon release from his incarceration in state prison.
The diocese has said that some of the conversations described in the report are inaccurate and that Canon Law required the diocese to provide some support to Father Zula.
The grand jury report goes on to brand Cardinal Wuerl as the creator of the phrase “circle of secrecy” — essentially the conspiracy of silence by which dioceses in Pennsylvania worked to shield abusing priests from law enforcement, kept clergy members in ministry and limited public disclosure. The report does not specify how the grand jury concluded that Wuerl wrote the phrase.
Both Cardinal Wuerl and the Diocese of Pittsburgh deny that claim. The diocese said in its formal response to the grand jury report that someone else wrote the phrase, and it refers to a priest’s involvement in a 12-step recovery program that required him to “honor the principle of anonymity.”
The priest was recovering “from alcoholism and sexual misconduct,” matters that needed to be disclosed if the priest were to ever return to ministry, the diocese said.
While some details of those incidents became public years ago — in Father Zula’s criminal case, for example — many of them were not widely known to the public prior to the grand jury report’s release.
Cardinal Wuerl left the Pittsburgh diocese in 2006, after he was appointed to oversee the Archdiocese of Washington — a position that put him in close proximity to some of the nation’s most prominent politicians.
Cardinal Wuerl succeeded Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, who has since resigned as cardinal and been banned from public ministry under the cloud of accusations that he sexually abused boys, young priests and seminarians.
The differences between Cardinal Wuerl and Archbishop McCarrick were easy to spot, some church observers have said.
While Archbishop McCarrick was gregarious and very involved in the political scene — hosting George W. Bush’s first private dinner in Washington after he became president — Cardinal Wuerl preferred to remain less ingrained in the city’s political scene, said Catholic University of America political scientist Stephen Schneck.
Cardinal Wuerl hasn’t been entirely absent from the political scene, though. He was among those the staunchly Catholic Ohio Republican, John Boehner, consulted before resigning as House speaker.
Cardinal Wuerl “has been very careful not to take partisan sides in any of the national political debates, and very careful to really just present the church’s teachings on a number of issues of national importance directly and strongly but not in any way that obviously tilts toward one or the other side in American politics,” Mr. Schneck said in a recent interview.
The cardinal’s formal, dignified and quiet presence was a sharp contrast to his predecessor's style, and a shift from what Washingtonians expected.
“He has played a lot more formal role in representing the archdiocese in and around the political circles. He doesn’t do the sort of chummy back-slapping that really fit McCarrick. Cardinal Wuerl is just not comfortable in those situations,” Mr. Schneck said.
Cardinal Wuerl’s relative disengagement in public policy contrasted sharply with his influence over church policy. He was known for having legendary stamina for committee meetings both at the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
He was elevated to the College of Cardinals in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI and participated in the conclave that selected Pope Francis in 2013.
Later in 2013, Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Wuerl to the influential Congregation for Bishops, a Vatican body that recommends bishop appointees to the pope.
Cardinal Wuerl was the sole American tapped by the pope to serve on the committee that drafted a report on the 2015 synod on the family. It had a broad scope that included contentious issues such as divorce, remarriage, homosexuality and couples living together outside of marriage. Conservative Catholics were concerned that Cardinal Wuerl’s presence at the synod would weaken the church’s position that marriage cannot be dissolved.
Supporters have pointed to his ability to work with very different factions of the church as evidence of his diplomacy and sharp negotiation skills, but critics have feared it was a sign of something else.
Cardinal Wuerl did good things as a bishop but also had flaws, and it was correct to resign at this time, said John Gehring, Catholic Program director at Faith in Public Life, a progressive advocacy organization, and author of a book on Pope Francis.
"Cardinal Wuerl had a mixed record when it came to handling abuse cases," Mr. Gehring said via Twitter. "Zero tolerance means a mixed record isn't good enough."
First Published: October 12, 2018, 11:09 a.m.
