Pope Names Pittsburgh Bishop to Washington, D.C., Post, by Laurie Goodstein, New York Times [Washington DC], May 17, 2006

Pope Names Pittsburgh Bishop to Washington, D.C., Post

By Laurie Goodstein
The New York Times [Washington DC]
May 17, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/us/17archbishop.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Pope Benedict XVI appointed Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh on Tuesday to be the next archbishop of Washington, D.C., replacing Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, a natural diplomat who raised the church's profile in the capital despite the scandal over sexual abuse by priests.

Bishop Donald W. Wuerl, right, and Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, whom the bishop is succeeding as archbishop of Washington, D.C.
Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

Bishop Wuerl, 65, is well regarded in the Vatican, where he once worked, and by fellow American bishops as a pragmatic conservative, church experts said. In 18 years as bishop of Pittsburgh, he won respect by consulting parishioners in a major reorganization of parishes and by insisting that the Vatican defrock a priest with a history of sexual abuse.

Although the Archdiocese of Washington, with 560,000 Catholics, is smaller than the diocese in Pittsburgh, with 800,000 Catholics, it is more prominent. The archbishop of Washington often serves as the church's primary contact with politicians and the news media and is traditionally elevated to cardinal, making him eligible to vote for pope.

"I will be making every effort to teach the faith, and teach it in every feasible way," Bishop Wuerl said in a telephone interview. "What the church brings, and what is so desperately needed today, is the realization that there is a spiritual dimension to life, to everyone's life. And that can be a root to resolving the violence and the injustice we find in the world."

He will be installed June 22.

Cardinal McCarrick submitted his resignation last year when he turned 75, as church rules require. He had been the archbishop of Newark before going to Washington.

Cardinal McCarrick's five and a half years in Washington coincided with a devastating scandal over sexual abuse by priests, during which he stepped into the news media spotlight to describe the church's response. He also raised hundreds of millions of dollars for church projects and will ordain 12 new priests this month — a bounty compared with most dioceses.

"He has no enemies in this archdiocese," said the Rev. Robert F. Drinan, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and a former member of Congress.

Cardinal McCarrick said of his successor in an interview: "I couldn't be happier. He is one of the great teachers of the church in our time. This has been true whenever he speaks. At the meetings of the bishops conference, when Bishop Wuerl speaks, everybody listens."

The two prelates, who are friends, were on the same side in the controversy over whether to deny communion to Catholic politicians who did not uphold the church's position on abortion. Cardinal McCarrick led bishops in creating a compromise statement that said each case should be decided individually, but cautioned against using the eucharist as a weapon.

Bishop Wuerl said yesterday: "Our primary job is to teach and try to convince people. The tradition in our country has not been in the direction of refusing communion, and I think it's served us well."

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, who observed most bishops' annual meetings as the former editor of the Jesuit magazine America, said of Bishop Wuerl, "He's conservative, but he's a pastoral conservative."

"He's quite orthodox theologically, but he doesn't like to play cop; he's not an authoritarian person," said Father Reese, who was forced to resign from the magazine last year, soon after the election of Benedict, because he had published articles about church controversies.

Rocco Palmo, United States correspondent for The Tablet, a Catholic weekly based in London, and a blogger who predicted the new appointment last month, said: "The Vatican saw that McCarrick has raised the profile of the archbishopric in Washington. It was important that someone be appointed to D.C. that has the profile for this, and this new archbishop has all the preparation in the world."