Washington’s New Archbishop Has a History of Fighting Child Sexual Abuse

By Esther Ciammachilli
WAMU Radio
April 5, 2019

https://wamu.org/story/19/04/05/washingtons-new-archbishop-has-a-history-of-fighting-child-sexual-abuse/

Wilton Gregory faces challenges moving the Washington Archdiocese past the scandals of his predecessors.

Archbishop Wilton Gregory has been working to combat child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church since the early 1990s – long before the church was forced to reckon with decades-old allegations and cover-ups.

“This is obviously a moment fraught with challenges,” Gregory said at a press conference Thursday at the Archdiocese of Washington after he was appointed the new archbishop. “Throughout our entire Catholic Church, certainly, but nowhere more so than in this local faith community.”

The challenges Gregory references are those left by his predecessors.

The former archbishop, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, became the first U.S. cardinal to resign last fall after a Pennsylvania grand jury criticized him over his handling of child sex abuse cases when he was bishop of Pittsburgh. Another blow came in February when Wuerl’s predecessor, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was defrocked after the church found him guilty of sexually abusing children and adults for decades. Gregory says his job will consist of helping the community to heal and cope with the church’s past.

“As in any family, challenges can only be overcome by a firmly articulated resolve and commitment to do better,” Gregory said. “I want to offer you hope. I will rebuild your trust.”

Gregory found Catholicism as a teenager growing up in Chicago. He was ordained a priest at age 25 and became an auxiliary bishop under the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.

Gregory became bishop of Belleville, Illinois, in 1994. He was tasked with handling a child sexual abuse scandal after he took over. At the time, clergy sexual abuse wasn’t in the news the way it is today, said Joshua McElwee, Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.

“There hasn’t been a lot of scrutiny of Archbishop Gregory’s record in the 1990s,” McElwee said. “It is known that he laicized several priests. He brought their cases to the Vatican when abuse claims came forward.”

The practice of laicizing priests means to remove priests from the clerical state. This is short of a defrocking.

When Gregory took over Belleville, priests in the diocese were facing allegations of sexual assault from more than 30 people. Gregory was instrumental in calling attention to the matter. But not much else was done until 2002, following revelations of decades of sexual abuse and assault by Catholic priests in Boston. Gregory was serving as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at the time.

“He was a quite young bishop,” McElwee said. “He was lower in the hierarchy. He wasn’t an archbishop or a cardinal. And he faced some difficulty in bringing the bishops together eventually passing what would become the charter that would commit them to zero tolerance for abuse and to removing abusive priests from ministry.”

Gregory fought and eventually secured a unanimous vote of support for the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which provides guidance for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. Gregory’s unwavering stance against child sexual abuse and his steadfast determination to face the issue head-on makes him very popular and gives young Catholics like 21-year-old Victoria Abril hope that Washington can heal.

“If he’s really prepared to take on what might come forth and he’s really able to speak directly to what’s currently occurring in the church, I think that that’ll be a big positive for the community members,” Abril said.

Abril said the Catholic community in Washington mostly needs transparency right now. And, she adds, the people want to know that their fears and concerns are being heard and that the archbishop will create positive change.