Archdiocese of Milwaukee Removes Names of Cousins, Weakland from Headquarters and Cathedral
By Bruce Vielmetti
Bowing to increased pressure from Catholic church sex abuse victims and the faithful, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee announced Tuesday that it was removing the names of former Archbishops William E. Cousins and Rembert G. Weakland — both of whom took part in the coverup of sex crimes against children — from its headquarters complex and cathedral center. The archdiocese removed the sign outside the Archbishop Cousins Catholic Center, its headquarters complex in St. Francis on Tuesday. A new name will be announced and a temporary sign installed at 10 a.m. Friday. Weakland's name was quietly removed in recent days from the pastoral center at St. John the Evangelist in downtown Milwaukee, as was a bas relief inside the Cathedral depicting Weakland shepherding small children. However, historical portraits of Cousins and Weakland will remain inside the cathedral, said spokeswoman Amy Grau. The archdiocese's decision, which has been sought by victim-survivors for years, follows similar moves by church officials around the country. Archbishop Jerome Listecki informed Catholics of the move in his weekly e-mail newsletter Monday, calling it "a sign of our repentance." "It will take time to restore the trust that has been lost," he said. Abuse survivors and advocates have long called on the archdiocese to expunge the names of Weakland and Cousins from its buildings — they see the bas relief of Weakland with children as particularly offensive. Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests lauded the decision, saying, "Hopefully, this will provide some measure of comfort for the many victims that both of them were responsible for." But he said the church's reckoning must go further to include former Archbishop Timothy Dolan, now Cardinal of New York, who took steps to shield church assets from from victims in advance of its bankruptcy; Listecki, who opposed unsealing the names of what victims say are more than 100 alleged offenders in the bankruptcy; and retired auxiliary Bishop Richard Sklba, who served as Weakland's go-to man in handling abusive priests over the years.
"The names that really count in the archdiocese are the over 100 alleged offenders that are still sealed in the bankruptcy files," said Isely, who renewed a call for Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul to launch a statewide investigation of the church's actions, similar to those undertaken across the country in recent months. "It's absolutely astounding and appalling that those names have not been released and investigated." Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm has also called for a statewide probe and said he would consider seeking access to the names under seal in the bankruptcy in an effort to investigate those allegations. On Tuesday, a worker used a crowbar to pry the metal letters off the stone monument outside the Cousins Center, tossing them to the side to be carted away. "So you see, today, we make another step forward in our process as a church to reconcile with abuse survivors," Jerry Topczewski, Listecki's chief of staff, told reporters assembled at the site. Topczewski reiterated the archdiocese assertion that all allegations against diocesan priests in its jurisdiction have been investigated by civil authorities and said the church doesn't identify alleged abusers if the accusation has not been deemed credible. Cousins and Weakland, who between them led the 10-county archdiocese from 1958 to 2002, oversaw some of the archdiocese's most notorious child molesters, keeping them in posts or moving them to new assignments without telling families of their histories. Among them: Lawrence Murphy, who abused hundreds of deaf boys, some of whom were groomed in the confessional; and Sigfried Widera, who was facing 42 counts of child abuse in Wisconsin and California when he jumped to his death from a Mexico hotel room in 2003.
Weakland, considered a luminary of the Church's progressive wing — he penned the U.S. bishops' 1985 pastoral letter on the economy — retired in 2002 amid his own scandal after it became public that he paid $450,000 to silence a former seminarian who accused him of sexual assault. Weakland maintained it was a consensual relationship. Weakland, who is in hospice care, still has many supporters, some of whom are likely to see the archdiocese's move as a kind of scapegoating. The sex abuse crisis, which exploded publicly with a 2002 investigation by the Boston Globe, has cost the church about $4 billion in settlements for cases dating to the 1980s, according to the nonprofit website BishopAccountability.org. At least a dozen dioceses have filed for bankruptcy as a way to settle the claims of victims, including the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. In the end, it agreed to pay $21 million to about 330 of the more than 500 victims who filed claims in the bankruptcy, one of the smallest settlement agreements to date. Church officials around the country have been releasing the names of abusive priests and removing names from buildings in the wake of a damning Pennsylvania grand jury report last summer that documented the abuse of 1,000 children. In Milwaukee, former Marquette University President the Rev. Robert Wilde asked that the university remove his name from a new residence hall last year, saying he had mishandled sexual abuse allegations against three members of his Jesuit order in Chicago more than 25 years ago. Months later, Jesuit provinces across the country began releasing the names of their abusive priests, including those who had served in Wisconsin and those supervised by Wild.
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