WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post
May 1, 2019
By Julie Zauzmer
The news that Georgia’s attorney general is investigating sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, coming just after Atlanta’s Archbishop Wilton Gregory was chosen for the top job in Washington’s Catholic church, came as yet another blow to those who had been hoping for a relief from scandal when their new archbishop arrives.
Gregory, 71, has been cast as a much-needed reformer for the Archdiocese of Washington. Within the past year, ex-archbishop Theodore McCarrick was disgraced and defrocked after accusations that he committed sexual abuse, and then his successor Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the leader of Washington’s Catholics for the past 12 years, retired early due to revelations about his own handling of abuse cases.
When Pope Francis picked Gregory last month to replace Wuerl, many Catholics hopefully heralded Gregory as someone who could clean house.
On Tuesday, Atlanta media cast a pallor over that hope, by reporting that the archdiocese that Gregory has led for the last 14 years, in Atlanta, is the latest of dozens of dioceses nationwide to be the target of a criminal investigative probe.
“Washington is both a wounded church, and a vital and diverse Catholic community. What we don’t need is PTSD [from another investigation]. Hopefully we’ll avoid that. That depends on the result,” said John Carr, who worked with Gregory at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops during the 2002 crisis and who spoke out in the past year about his own childhood abuse.
He said he still trusts that Gregory can steer Washington’s Catholics faithfully. “Let me be clear, no one did enough. But Archbishop Gregory showed courage and compassion and urgency in addressing this crisis in 2002 and since then. He has been a leader and I expect him to continue to be a leader.”
In statements, the Atlanta archdiocese and the Savannah diocese both said that they support the investigation and had entered into a “memorandum of understanding” to provide their cooperation, which seemed to mean access to previously private diocesan files on priests.
The bishops said that the investigation would eventually lead to a published report.
Joe Grace, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office, said on Wednesday that since that state completed its massive inquiry into sexual abuse by Catholic priests last summer, documenting abuse of more than 1,000 children by more than 300 clergy over a span of 70 years, Attorney General Josh Shapiro and his top staff have spoken with the attorneys general of 45 states. Following Pennsylvania’s example and acting on the belief that similar abuse took place in secret in every state, many of these attorneys general launched investigations last year. Georgia’s Chris Carr is now the latest.
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