Wuerl's zero tolerance of sexually abusive priests was only partial, reports suggest

By Peter Smith
Post-Gazette
February 16, 2019

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“It (child molestation) is not just a moral lapse. I know now, and I have said to priests, that they cannot be reassigned. Science says there is no cure.”

— Then-Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh, October 1988

Soon after taking the helm as the Roman Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh in 1988, Donald Wuerl made emphatic statements to the public, to his own priests and to the Vatican that he’d have a zero-tolerance approach toward sexually abusive priests.

This was 14 years before zero-tolerance became a U.S.-wide policy among his fellow Catholic bishops. Whether to make it a global policy is among the topics under discussion as top bishops from around the world gather in Rome for a summit on the abuse crisis beginning this Thursday.

But did zero tolerance really get the head start in Pittsburgh that it seemed at the time?

In fact, under Bishop Wuerl, the deeds fell far short of the words, as revealed in an August 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report. That report showed a far less consistent policy between 1988 and 2002, the year that U.S. bishops adopted a nationwide zero-tolerance policy. 

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reviewed each of the local cases in the grand jury report to look for factors that informed the dioceses’ decisions on accused priests. The report was largely based on internal diocesan documents.

Bishop Wuerl led the Diocese of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006 before becoming archbishop of Washington, D.C., which he led for the next dozen years while also gaining the title of cardinal. Now 78, he’s winding down his long career as a U.S. church administrator, awaiting the appointment of his successor in Washington.

From those first statements in 1988 to as recently as last summer, Cardinal Donald Wuerl sought to reinforce his reputation as being on the vanguard of reform.

And he had a case to make.

He did, after all, remove several abusers from ministry long before that was church policy. He set up an advisory board to review allegations, authorized settlements and counseling for victims and defied legal advice in meeting with the parents of victims suing the church. He famously and successfully challenged a Vatican court that tried to order him to reinstate a dangerous serial predator.

Last summer, as a Pennsylvania grand jury was preparing to release its report on abuse in Pittsburgh’s and five other dioceses, Cardinal Wuerl sought to reinforce his reputation as a pioneering reformer in his official response to the investigation.

In 1988, he recounted, he told priests that “sexual misconduct with a minor was not just a grave sin and a moral offense, but also a serious crime that would result in permanent removal from ministry and possible imprisonment.”

But the grand jury, releasing its report on Aug. 14, highlighted cases that showed he did, in fact, keep some known abusers in ministry.

The criticism over that, and over a separate scandal involving Cardinal Wuerl’s predecessor in Washington, prompted him to ask Pope Francis to accept his immediate resignation. The pope did so in October, but not before defending his ally as having made “some mistakes” but not attempting to “cover up crimes.”

The dueling narratives over Cardinal Wuerl aren’t just a matter of historical curiosity.

A new line of lawsuits accuses the Diocese of Pittsburgh, under past and present bishops, of a decades-long conspiracy and fraud for allegedly covering up abuse.

By claiming a conspiracy that continued right up until its public exposure last year, the plaintiffs in the lawsuits are seeking to avoid the statute of limitations, which bars lawsuits over long-ago sexual abuse. (A similar case involving another diocese, which could be precedent-setting, is pending before the state Superior Court.)

Cardinal Wuerl declined to comment for this article, deferring to the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s response to the grand jury report. The diocese did not add to that response when invited to do so last week.

In its lengthy written response to the grand jury, the diocese acknowledged the devastating history of abuse that led to more than 90 priests being accused of abuse across seven decades.

But it noted that almost all of the documented assaults happened more than 30 years ago and that it has steadily improved its policies under Bishops Wuerl and David Zubik.

That includes meeting with victims and offering counseling; setting up an independent board to review allegations; and expanding its reporting to where it now refers all cases to authorities and announces them at parishes where the accused worked, even when the accused is long deceased.

“Since at least 1988, the Diocese of Pittsburgh has attempted to do its utmost to place the interests of children and victims above all other concerns,” it said.

Diocesan officials took issue with some of the claims in the report. But neither the diocese nor Cardinal Wuerl are continuing to claim he kept every known abuser out of ministry before that became national policy in 2002.

Instead, they have offered explanations, which fit into certain categories, for instances in which that did not occur.

•        Standards of proof

Before changes in church law, “we were required to have some modicum of proof before moving out the person” if the priest denied the charge, Cardinal Wuerl told the Catholic magazine America last fall.

There are cases in the grand jury report that show that. For example, one priest stayed in ministry after denying a second-hand allegation that arose in the 1990s and the diocese unsuccessfully sought to contact the family.

However, some priests stayed in ministry despite having more than a modicum of evidence against them.

The diocese kept the Rev. George Zirwas in ministry until 1995, despite receiving as many as five separate allegations of abuse over several years.

The Rev. Francis Siler faced as many as four allegations by 1995, as well as a warning by a mental-health center to keep him away from minors; the diocese placed him in restricted ministry but did not remove him until 2002.

• Mental health evaluations

The diocese relied on mental health professionals who evaluated accused priests for possible sexual disorders, provided treatment and recommended whether it was safe to return them to ministry. 

“At the time, the church believed that the treatment facilities that the church was using would and could be successful in treating and rehabilitating those accused of sexual abuse,” one of Bishop Wuerl’s personnel aides, the Rev. Robert Guay, confirmed in his own written response to the grand jury. “ … Now it seems clear, in retrospect, that such treatment and rehabilitation was not successful and that such recommendations should not have been followed.”

This approach, while common nationwide, is at odds with Bishop Wuerl’s earlier statement that offenders could not be reassigned.

While the grand jury’s summaries of cases do not always make clear what went into assignment decisions, the diocese cited a mental health evaluation in a letter clearing the way for the Rev. Ernest Paone to return to ministry in California after an allegation against him surfaced. He had moved West in the 1960s after barely escaping prosecution for earlier allegations of sexual crimes against children in Beaver County but had remained under the Pittsburgh diocese’s authority.

Despite knowing of multiple allegations, the diocese noted in a 1996 letter to the Diocese of San Diego that Father Paone had emerged from an evaluation without any diagnosis of pedophilia or ephebophilia -- sexual attraction to younger or older minors. The diocese acknowledges it wouldn’t handle such a case that way today. Father Paone stayed in ministry until around 2001 and died in 2012.

Even a troublesome mental-health evaluation didn’t always lead to ouster from ministry.

The Rev. Joseph Karabin admitted to some accusations against him by the early 1990s, yet Bishop Wuerl kept him on as a chaplain at Braddock Hospital until 2002, even after a treatment center found he had a sexual attraction to older teen boys. 

• Restrictions on ministry

In some cases, the diocese authorized priests to do only administrative work. Or they’d be assigned to a limited chaplaincy at nursing homes, prisons or hospitals (such as Father Karabin’s assignment), where they would presumably have less exposure to children than they would at a parish.

That wasn’t always diligently enforced, however.

The Rev. William P. O’Malley III was accused of sexually abusing boys in the late 1990s even after the diocese restricted him to administrative duty in the late 1990s. By then he had admitted to an allegation, was diagnosed with ephebophilia and had violated restrictions by presenting himself in public as a priest. Father O’Malley died in 2008.

After a series of complaints from parents from 1988 through 2002 regarding his behavior with children in locker rooms and other settings, Rev. Thomas O'Donnell was appointed to St. Cyril of Alexandria Church on the North Side. Twice in 2006 he was warned not to spend any time at St. Cyril grade school, after his appearances led to concerns among diocesan officials about a potential "groundswell of gossip.” The diocese barred him from ministry after receiving the grand jury report.

The Rev. Leo Burchianti faced multiple allegations of abuse by 1990, yet he stayed in ministry and a diocesan official assured him the most recent allegation, from the 1970s, could not be prosecuted due to the statute of limitations.

Only in 1993, when yet another alleged victim came forward, was Father Burchianti sent to live at the diocese’s retirement center.

Yet he continued to present himself as a priest; as late as 2001, a story in the diocesan newspaper mentioned a second-grade school girl visiting with him as part of a class project in which pupils wrote to retired priests. Father Burchianti died in 2013.

Mental-health evaluations, so-called restricted assignments, setting a strict standard of proof — all of these were common approaches among Cardinal Wuerl’s fellow bishops in the crucial years between the late 1980s, when the scandal of sexual abuse by priests first erupted, and the crucial year of 2002.

History has been harsher on Cardinal Wuerl’s contemporaries, such as Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, whose mishandling of abuse cases led to the crisis described in the movie “Spotlight,” Cardinal Roger Mahony, who was essentially barred by his successor from ministry in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for having helped abusers evade law enforcement; and Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, an earlier Pittsburgh bishop who was fiercely criticized by a 2005 grand jury report.

What’s clear from the Pittsburgh files described in the grand jury report, though, is that it took at least until 2002 for Bishop Wuerl’s deeds to live up to his words that all abusers would be barred.

That was the year when the Boston Globe’s revelations of pervasive coverup in the Archdiocese of Boston led to a nationwide policy that Bishop Wuerl himself championed — that of banishment from ministry for even a single offense.

That same year, Bishop Wuerl removed several priests due to new or newly reviewed allegations, saying he was “raising the bar” of protecting parishioners, although he didn’t publicly name the priests. 

And Bishop Wuerl, who had earlier overseen financial settlements with victims that limited their ability to speak publicly about their abuse, resisted advocates’ call for more transparency, which could have included publication of a list of known abusers.

Under his leadership, the diocese successfully fought off lawsuits in the early 2000s that could have yielded church documents about abuse.

That legal success turned into a Pyrrhic victory.

Unlike in states like Massachusetts and Kentucky, where litigation had aired out the dirty laundry of dioceses years ago, most of the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s documentation of abuse remained stored, like a timebomb, until 2018.

Before Aug. 14, the names of about 44 alleged abusers in the Diocese of Pittsburgh were publicly known, counting not just clergy but religious brothers as well.

The grand jury more than doubled that number in one day, with plenty of explicit detail, and the explosion of outrage has triggered investigations across the country and, as much as anything, this week’s summit in Rome.