Daily Record
May 7, 2009
http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20090507/UPDATES01/90507019/1005/NEWS01
MILWAUKEE — A former archbishop who retired amid allegations of a sex scandal is moving from Milwaukee to Morris Township.
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee says former Archbishop Rembert Weakland will settle at St. Mary's Abbey in Morris Township, N.J., by July 1.
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| Archbishop Rembert Weakland Photo by AP |
The 82-year-old Weakland retired in 2002 after admitting the archdiocese secretly paid $450,000 to a man who accused him of sexual abuse. He declined to comment on his move.
Archdiocese spokeswoman Julie Wolf says Weakland was invited to live at the abbey, where he spent a sabbatical in the late 1990s.
Neither an e-mail sent to the Abbey seeking comment nor a voice mail message left with the Rev. Giles Hayes, who is the abbot in church of the abbey, were returned.
Monks at the abbey run Delbarton School, an elite college-preparatory school for boys, and serve as chaplains for convents and parishes in northern New Jersey.
Weakland has been working on a soon-to-be released book, "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop," which its publisher said "describes with poignant honesty" the archbishop's "psychological, spiritual, and sexual growth," according to a report published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Weakland began serving as Milwaukee archbishop in 1977 but retired in 2002 after it was revealed that he had paid $450,000 to a man who accused him of date rape in 1979. In 1998, the man, Paul Marcoux, attempted to extort $1 million from Weakland in exchange for a love note the archbishop had written years earlier, according to court records.
The retired archbishop is also a witness in a series of civil lawsuits brought by victims of alleged clergy sex abuse against the archdiocese, the Journal reported. Weakland admitted in a deposition released in November that he transferred priests with a history of sexual misconduct back into churches without alerting parishioners. He also did not report alleged abuses to law enforcement authorities and said that bishops spoke in code in correspondence discussing abusers who had been moved outside their diocese, the Journal reported.
St. Mary's monks work as teachers and administrators at Delbarton School, an elite college-preparatory school for boys; as chaplains for convents of religious women; and as pastors and weekend assistants in parishes around northern New Jersey, according to its web site.
Asked Thursday by the Milwaukee newspaper whether he would be working in any of the abbey's missions, Weakland said only: "I'm 82."
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