By Paul Schindler
Gay City News
May 12, 2009
http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20313472&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568857&rfi=6
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| Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland. |
Rembert G. Weakland, the retired archbishop of Milwaukee who resigned in 2002 in a scandal over using $450,000 in archdiocesan funds to hush up a former Marquette University theology student who accused him of a 1979 date rape, has finally come out in a new memoir entitled "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church," set for publication next month.
Publisher's Weekly has dubbed the book "a moving personal confession," and Weakland told the Associated Press, "I was very careful and concerned that the book not become a Jerry Springer, to satisfy people's prurient curiosity or anything of this sort."
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel complained that Weakland, 82, declined to discuss the book with that newspaper, which it said had "extensively covered his personal scandal and his alleged role in covering up sex abuse by other priests, now the subject of civil lawsuits." The memoir, however, also acknowledges Weakland's failure to respond appropriately to the priest scandal.
The newspaper stated that the payout of archdiocesan funds, which it said were repaid by Weakland and friends, resulted from a 1998 extortion demand by the former theology student, Paul Marcoux, who threatened to release a love note the archbishop had sent him.
Weakland said he will donate proceeds of his book to the Catholic Community Foundation, a Wisconsin charitable group.
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