By David O'Reilly
Philadelphia Inquirer
September 4, 2011
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/129198773.html
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| Archbishop Charles J. Chaput answered questions at a Philadelphia news conference in July. |
DENVER - He was known as an uncommonly forceful archbishop, a plainspoken paladin who battled abortion, advocated for the poor and immigrants, exhorted Catholics to live and vote church teachings, and quickly removed sexually abusive priests.
In 14 years here, he grew to national prominence, a darling of church conservatives and the bane of Catholic politicians who did not toe the pro-life line. He would one day wear the red cap of a cardinal, the pundits predicted. "Chicago," many whispered. It was heartland America, like him.
So when the papal nuncio phoned July 5 to tell him he was bound for Philadelphia, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput allows he was "genuinely surprised."
The envoy "spent three minutes talking with me, maybe five," but gave no marching orders, Chaput said in a recent interview in his soon-to-be-vacated office looking out on the Rockies.
"Everybody thinks it's the way we've managed the sexual-abuse issues" in Denver, he said of the whys and wherefores of his summons east. "But nobody told me that."
On Thursday, this Franciscan-Capuchin friar with the Kansas twang and the Potowatomi Indian lineage will be installed as the 13th head of the 1.5-million-member Archdiocese of Philadelphia, succeeding the retiring archbishop, Cardinal Justin Rigali.
Compactly built and verbally quick, Chaput seems a decade younger than his 66 years. Still, at an age synonymous with retirement, he admits to some trepidation taking over a historic East Coast archdiocese nearly four times more populous than the 400,000-member Denver flock.
"People ask me, can I do it?" he said. "I don't know."
The famously informal archbishop answered nearly all of his e-mail in Denver, and gladly, because "I hate phone calls." But he doesn't know how accessible he can be in the Philadelphia archdiocese.
"I'm already getting hundreds of e-mails saying, 'You should do this, and you should do that,' " he said. "I write back and say, 'I'm not the bishop. Remind me of that when I get into place.' "
By taking his seat in the oak-and-velvet chair at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, Chaput assumes leadership of an archdiocese nationally known over the last century for its staunch traditionalism and, during the last six years, for its clergy sex-abuse scandals.
After the release in February of a second Philadelphia grand jury report, the District Attorney's Office arrested three current or former priests and a former parochial-school teacher accused of raping two boys in the 1990s. In addition, a monsignor who headed the clergy office under Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua was charged with child endangerment.
The concussion from the report did not end there. In March, Rigali suspended dozens of priests who had allegedly abused minors or engaged in other misconduct. The complex investigation of those cases, and their disposition, now falls into Chaput's hands.
Some of the accused clergy have been among his many e-mailers. Their cases have been "dragging on too long," Chaput said they told him, and beseeched him not to delay in deciding their fates.
He wants the cases resolved "as promptly as it can be done," he said. But "these are not decisions as bishop you can make alone, and make well, especially if you're new to a diocese."
He admitted, "I don't look forward to it." Whatever he decides "will be painful for some: for the individual priest, his family, [or] for the people who are victimized and want some redress."
Before restoring or dismissing any priest, he said, he will consult the archdiocesan review board, the priests' council, his auxiliary bishops, and the team Rigali appointed in March to investigate the allegations, some of which date back decades.
Rigali did not make those accusations public, and Chaput said he likely will follow suit, even after the cases are decided.
"People have a right to privacy - both the people who claim they were victimized and the priests who claim they are innocent," Chaput said.
He has read some of the 2005 grand jury report that named 63 priests as sex abusers and accused his predecessors - Bevilacqua and the late Cardinal John Krol - of an "immoral" and "massive coverup" of the crimes. He said he intends to finish that report and the shorter 2011 report before his installation.
He said he also hoped to meet with District Attorney Seth Williams, whose prosecutors wrote the second report.
While Chaput has a reputation for swiftly removing credibly accused priests, some abuse victims and their advocates worry he was sent to Philadelphia for another reason: to quash efforts in the state legislature to give victims expanded opportunities to sue their abusers.
In 2006, Chaput put together a coalition that defeated a bill to open a temporary "window" in Colorado's civil statute for adults who were abused as children.
In batting down such legislation, "he set the standard for other dioceses across the United States. He wrote the playbook." said Susan Matthews, founder of Catholics4Change, an abuse victim's blog. "That's why he was put here."
Despite her qualms, however, she said Chaput has not only responded personally to her e-mails - something Rigali never did - but was surprisingly friendly.
And that, she said, is "a real change in culture."
Souvenirs from Denver
Soon, visitors to the archbishop's office in archdiocesan headquarters in Center City will likely find Chaput seated in a chair of buffalo hide - one of two given to him by the Indian community of Rapid City, S.D., where he was bishop from 1988 to 1997.
They are among the few souvenirs of his Denver tenure that he is bringing with him.
His life in Denver was "certainly less formal" than his predecessors' in Philadelphia, he said. "I drive myself. I go shopping for groceries. I go to the drugstore to buy toothpaste."
But will he change Philadelphia's formal ways, or will they change him?
In Denver, he sold the big bishop's house, and used the proceeds to build a smaller home on the grounds of the archdiocese's campus-like headquarters.
But he gives no hint what he might do with the cardinal's stone mansion on City Avenue in West Philadelphia, and its six acres of gated grounds, where Krol once installed a par-3 golf hole.
"It's been the residence of the bishop for a long time," he said. "Also, I'm going to be bishop there for the rest of my active career. It belongs to the church, not to me."
He predicted it would take about two years to become fully acquainted with his new bailiwick, comprising 2,183 square miles in the city and four Pennsylvania suburban counties. To do that, he said, he plans to devote three days a week to meet with the public, three days to do administrative work, and "one day to pray and read and write."
Told that his friend, conservative Catholic columnist George Weigel, recently praised him for instilling in Denver a "dynamic Catholic identity in an exceptionally secular environment," Chaput shrugged off the compliment. "I don't sit about analyzing myself," he said.
But minutes later he noted that 42 percent of Denver Catholics say they regularly attend Sunday Mass. That is well above the 30 percent in the Philadelphia archdiocese, and in the church nationwide.
Chaput reluctantly took some credit for the turnout in Denver, saying it might reflect his "very energetic view" of how his priests should preach the gospel.
He preached nearly every Saturday evening at the Denver cathedral. He plans to continue that practice in Philadelphia "so that the people who want to hear the bishop preach can come every week." Rigali was not a regular in the cathedral pulpit.
Good preaching, Chaput said, "is the way to get people energized. So a renewal of preaching does lead to a renewal of the church. Jesus said it all. We just have to make sure it's heard."
Living the faith
Chaput is a man who speaks his mind, and the mind of his church, with chiseled words.
"If we don't help the poor," he said in the interview in Denver, "we're going to hell."
In his 2008 book Render Unto Caesar, he wrote, "Catholics who live so anonymously that no one knows their faith . . . aren't really living as 'Catholics' at all." He went on to observe that "American democracy depends on people of character fighting for their beliefs . . . forcefully and without apology."
Expect that of Chaput in Pennsylvania - his old stamping ground as a student at St. Fidelis Seminary in Butler County, and as head of the Capuchins' Pittsburgh-based province.
Less than three weeks after his installation, he will be in Harrisburg for a breakfast and Mass for Catholic legislators - subject as yet unannounced.
But if history is any measure, he will talk tough. In a 2006 guest homily at a Mass in Harrisburg, he told Catholic jurists and lawmakers, "Stuffing your Catholic faith in a closet isn't good manners. It's cowardice."
Like all Catholic prelates, Chaput takes an in-your-faith approach to abortion. Yet, he said, he views life issues as a "seamless garment," as articulated by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. "It means consistency in our teachings, that what we say about abortion we should say about other life issues," Chaput said.
"Protecting the environment is a life issue because we have to live in this beautiful world God has given us. But whether or not we drink water from plastic bottles is not nearly as important as whether or not we respect life from the moment of conception until death."
It is a message Chaput will surely bring east with him. His new flock should also be prepared to hear the call to "personal transformation" like they've never heard it before.
"There's no real renewal unless it's personal," Chaput said in the interview. "Personal means profoundly embraced, in the depth of who you are. But we're at the same time communal, so we do it together."
After 14 years of that togetherness in Denver, he said, it will be hard to leave.
"When you get get made a bishop of another diocese you change families. It's not that you just change jobs," he said. "It's really hard to change a family you love and embrace, and embrace another family who you come to love."
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