Clergy: Lori Will Be Missed
By Anne M. Amatoand and Martin B. Cassidy
BRIDGEPORT -- Bishop William E. Lori will be remembered for many things. There are those who will remember him as a great spiritual leader, a person open to new ideas and someone who was a friend and an asset to the community. But for others, they will never forget the way Lori dealt with the priest sexual-abuse scandal, which he inherited from his predecessor, in particular, his failure to reach out to the victims and their families. Lori, 60, will be leaving the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, after 10 years at the helm, to become the 16th Archbishop of Baltimore. The announcement was made Tuesday by Pope Benedict XVI. The Rev. Dr. Brian R. Bodt, president and CEO of the Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport, said Lori showed great leadership in the way he dealt with the sexual-abuse scandal. "One of the things about this part of the world is that Catholic is like a lightning rod because it's the biggest show in town," he said. "It's not that that type of thing hasn't happened in other denominations." He said Lori came on board at a time when those issues needed immediate attention. "He did the best he could with what he had to work with," Bodt said. "It's not a position that I would envy for anyone." Through it all, he said, Lori was a "great pastoral leader" for the Catholic community. Several parish pastors in lower Fairfield County said in addition to presiding over nearly half a million Catholics, Lori moved the diocese forward in the wake of public outrage over the sexual-abuse scandals and other missteps while fiercely defending the church's religious freedom. Monsignor Peter Cullen said that he and Lori became good friends over the past decade. Lori appointed Cullen vicar general for the diocese in 2002, a role which made Cullen the second-highest ranking official in the diocese and empowered to exercise the administrative authority of the bishop. Cullen, who is pastor of St. Michael's Parish on North Street in Greenwich, said that Lori displayed his passion to defend the church's autonomy when he rallied opposition to quickly derail a fledgling bill proposed in March 2009 that would have shifted responsibility for parish finances from pastors to lay councils. The Democratic legislators sponsoring the bill quickly dropped it. "We'll miss Bishop Lori," Cullen said. "He is a good and hard-working man of integrity and I'm sure the pope will send us a good priest to be bishop." Monsignor Stephen DiGiovanni, pastor of the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist on Atlantic Street said that Lori's appointment has the ring of historical serendipity, following in the footsteps of Lawrence Joseph Shehan, who served as an auxiliary bishop in Baltimore before taking over as bishop of the Bridgeport diocese in 1953 before being appointed archbishop of the Baltimore-Washington diocese. DiGiovanni said Lori moved quickly after his arrival in 2001 to address the sexual-abuse scandals, establishing the Safe Environments Program, an initiative that required employees and lay volunteers serving the diocese to undergo background checks and complete abuse-awareness training. "He was trying to bring about as much healing as he could," DiGiovanni said. In the aftermath of financial scandals involving the embezzlement of parish funds in Darien and Greenwich, Lori established a standardized financial reporting system that allowed the diocese to check the financial management of pastors, DiGiovanni said. More recently Lori, along with other religious figures, warned Congress not to enact the Obama administration's birth-control mandate that threatened religious freedom. "No one should be surprised that Archbishop Lori is going to Baltimore," DiGiovanni said. "And we know he will accomplish in Baltimore exactly the same things he has in Bridgeport." Rev. Richard Futie, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Stamford, said that Lori has also made strides to improve religious education and been an active bishop who comforted parishioners following tragedies. Futie said Lori demonstrated his compassion and understanding last August with his words at a candlelight vigil at Trinity Catholic High School in memory of Brian Bill, a U.S. Navy SEAL, who died along with 29 other soldiers in Afghanistan on August 6 when Taliban fighters shot down their helicopter. "Over the past months he has brought to the pulpit the heroic and faith-filled witness of the late Stamford native Brian Bill," Futie said. "He will leave his most lasting memory in the goodness shown in those painful, needy moments, through his paternal care." Jamie Dance, co-chairman of the Voice of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport, commended Lori for setting up the diocese's Safe Environment program, to enable people to recognize sexual abuse, if it occurred, and how to report it. The program, implemented in 2003, includes victim assistance, criminal background checks, written Codes of Conduct and child sexual-abuse awareness and prevention training for priests, deacons, lay employees and volunteers. "I do have to say it's one of the best around," she said. But, Dance added, they have never been able to learn how effective the program is because no statistics have ever been released to the people in the diocese. That's because of the secrecy that surrounds him, Dance said of Lori. "Lots of things have been kept secret," she said. This includes financial reports for the diocese over the past four years. "We have no idea how much money has come in or how much has been spent, although he demands transparency from all of the parishes," she said. But the biggest failure, she said, has been Lori's resistance to reach out to survivors of priest sexual abuse or their families. John Marshall Lee, another member of Voice of the Faithful, whose motto is "Keep the Faith, Change the Church," agreed. "He didn't listen enough to the concerns of the congregation when it came to that issue," Lee said. "He also didn't encourage those in the pews to listen and give respect to those who were abused."
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