PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive
By Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com
on January 24, 2014
It’s not that the young Ronald Gainer was considered most likely to become a bishop in his mid-1960s high school class.
Sure, the young Gainer was noticeably devout and serious about his faith, even for the 1,000-plus students at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary High School in Pottsville, Schuylkill County.
It’s more like this, said Ed Tray, a former classmate and current teacher at the Catholic high school: “I think anybody who went to school with him would know he would be a success in whatever he tried to do.” …
At the height of the church’s sex abuse scandals at the time, Gainer succeeded J. Kendrick Williams, who resigned the previous June after being accused of sexually abusing three boys earlier in his career.
Gainer faces no trauma like that in the new succession; his immediate predecessor in Harrisburg, Bishop Joseph McFadden, died unexpectedly last summer during a Bishop’s meeting in Philadelphia.
His time in Lexington was not without controversy. He consistently took a conservative stance and early in his tenure called for pro-abortion politicians to voluntarily abstain from receiving holy Communion, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
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