This week was already shaping up as a milestone in the career of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former bishop of his native Pittsburgh, who is reaching the mandatory retirement age of 80 from powerful roles he has held at the Vatican.
Adding to that, he is also expected to figure in a Vatican report Tuesday about his predecessor as archbishop of Washington, the disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The report is expected to focus on who knew what and when about allegations of sexual misconduct against the now-defrocked Mr. McCarrick, even as he rose to the highest ranks of the U.S. church hierarchy.
Cardinal Wuerl, who served as the Roman Catholic bishop of his native Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006, turns 80 on Thursday. Under Catholic Church law, that means he will no longer be eligible to vote in conclaves of cardinals who select a new pope when there is a vacancy.
In addition to shedding that role, Cardinal Wuerl will also reach mandatory retirement age on the influential Congregation for Bishops, which advises the pope on appointments of new bishops, and hence has a large role in shaping the church hierarchy around the world. He has served in that role since 2013. The mandatory retirement also applies to his service on the pontifical councils for culture and Christian unity.
Cardinal Wuerl will retain his cardinal’s red hat and can continue to serve in ceremonial and advisory roles.
But before Thursday comes Tuesday. That is when the Vatican is scheduled to release the long-awaited McCarrick report. It focuses on how the now-defrocked Mr. McCarrick was promoted through the church hierarchy and remained an honored elder statesman despite years of sexual misconduct that — while revealed publicly in 2018 — was long rumored in some church circles.
Cardinal Wuerl, who led the Washington archdiocese from 2006 to 2018 after succeeding Mr. McCarrick in that role, learned of one such allegation in 2004, when still bishop of Pittsburgh.
In 2004, a former priest — Robert Ciolek of New Jersey — came to Pittsburgh to report being subjected to sexual misconduct in the 1980s as an adult seminarian in Maryland by a professor there who was a priest of the Pittsburgh diocese.
In the process, Mr. Ciolek also told of being subjected to sexual misconduct as an adult from two other clerics who were not under the Pittsburgh diocese’s jurisdiction, including Mr. McCarrick. Mr. Ciolek said he also told the Pittsburgh diocese about similar misconduct by Mr. McCarrick toward other seminarians.
Then-Bishop Wuerl reported Mr. Ciolek’s allegation against Mr. McCarrick to the papal diplomatic representative to the United States.
Cardinal Wuerl last year said at first he didn’t know of rumors about Cardinal McCarrick’s behavior, but later said he was referring to rumors about abuse of children, not misconduct involving adults, and said he forgot about Mr. Ciolek’s allegation.
Fallout from the McCarrick scandal, coupled with the release of a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report that challenged Cardinal Wuerl’s once-strong reputation for handling cases of sexually abusive priests, hastened Cardinal Wuerl’s retirement as archbishop of Washington in 2018.
He was succeeded by current Archbishop Wilton Gregory, whom Pope Francis has designated to become a cardinal later this month. At 72, Archbishop Gregory will be eligible to vote in papal conclaves.
Typically no diocese, even a major one, has more than one conclave-eligible cardinal at a time, even if it’s a retired bishop. In a similar pattern, Cardinal Wuerl did not become a cardinal until 2010, when Mr. McCarrick, then still archbishop-emeritus and cardinal in good standing, reached age 80.
Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.
First Published: November 10, 2020, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: November 10, 2020, 11:01 a.m.