KANSAS CITY (MO)
Catholic News Service via National Catholic Reporter
September 5, 2018
By Mark Zimmermann
Washington – Parish priests in the Archdiocese of Washington — on the front lines dealing with the fallout of the church sexual abuse crisis this summer — have stressed the need to listen to and pray with their parishioners.
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The archdiocese was hit with the resignation of their retired archbishop, Theodore McCarrick, in the wake of sexual abuse allegations and then it faced a firestorm of criticism against Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl after the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing past decades of abuse in six dioceses.
Although some have credited Wuerl’s tenure in Pittsburgh with a decrease in abuse cases while he served as bishop there from 1988 until 2006, the grand jury’s report points to times when he is said to have allowed an accused priest to continue working and prevented an alleged victim from speaking out about being abused after a financial settlement.
Msgr. Michael Mellone, whom Wuerl installed as pastor of Annunciation Parish in Washington Sept. 2, said his first thought when the abuse scandals unfolded was: “Didn’t we deal with this already? And now I know we haven’t.”
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