MILWAUKEE (WI)
Washington Post
August 23, 2022
By Emily Langer
The Benedictine monk was one of the leading liberal voices in the Catholic Church before his resignation in 2002
Rembert G. Weakland, a Benedictine monk who became a leading liberal voice within the Catholic Church and served for 25 years as archbishop of Milwaukee, resigning his post in 2002 amid revelations of a financial settlement with a man who had been his lover decades earlier, died Aug. 22 at a retirement center in Greenfield, Wis. He was 95.
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee announced his death but did not cite a cause.
For years, until his embattled final days in office, Archbishop Weakland was one of the most prominent American prelates in the Catholic Church. He was by all accounts a formidable intellect — he spoke six languages and was a musical prodigy who had studied at Juilliard as well as the seminary — and brought to his ministry a compelling personal story.
One of six children raised by their widowed mother during the Depression, he said the Catholic schools he attended in Pennsylvania were “undoubtedly” his “ladder out of poverty.” In the 1960s, he became head of the worldwide Benedictine order and, under Pope Paul VI, received an appointment to help institute the liturgical changes of the Second Vatican Council, which sought to modernize the centuries-old practices and positions of the church.
Paul VI also elevated Archbishop Weakland in 1977 to his post in Milwaukee, where he led the archdiocese’s nearly 700,000 Catholics. In that role, he continued to promote the liberalization of the church, at times clashing with the more conservative Pope John Paul II, whose papacy began in 1978. In a church publication, Archbishop Weakland once called on Catholic leaders to “avoid the fanaticism and small-mindedness that has characterized so many periods of the church in its history — tendencies that lead to much cruelty, suppression of theological creativity and lack of growth.”
To make up for the shortfall of priests, Archbishop Weakland supported the ordination of married men, a position rejected by the Vatican. He promoted expanded ecclesiastical roles for women and appeared to challenge the church’s opposition to abortion and contraception by convening “listening sessions” in which he invited women to discuss those and other matters.
He was perhaps most outspoken on social justice and particularly economic justice, helping shepherd a pastoral letter from U.S. bishops in 1986 that described poverty and income disparities in the United States as “a social and moral scandal.” The document, which also decried poverty abroad, implicitly criticized the Reagan administration by calling out the “serious distortion of national economic priorities produced by massive national spending on defense” instead of social programs.
“Every economic decision and institution must be judged in light of whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person,” Archbishop Weakland said when the letter was released.
Despite his disagreements with more conservative prelates, Archbishop Weakland remained a visible and influential force in the church until 2002, when, in accordance with church practice, he offered his resignation to the Vatican at age 75. That occasion, however, coincided with revelations of a relationship that he had had two decades earlier with a theology student at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
The former student, Paul Marcoux, by then in his 50s, appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and accused Archbishop Weakland of committing what he called date rape during their relationship. Archbishop Weakland acknowledged having had an “inappropriate relationship” with Marcoux but vehemently denied having ever committed sexual abuse. In an out-of-court settlement in 1998, the Milwaukee archdiocese had paid Marcoux $450,000 in what Archbishop Weakland conceded might have been perceived as “hush money.”
Archbishop Weakland’s past affair became public just as investigations, sparked by an expose in the Boston Globe, revealed pervasive sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and decades-long efforts by the church hierarchy to cover it up. In a 2009 memoir, “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church,” Archbishop Weakland wrote that as archbishop, with authority over offending priests, he had handled their cases improperly.
“I had accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects [of abuse] on the youngsters,” he wrote. “Either they would not remember or would ‘grow out of it.’ ”
On Archbishop Weakland’s request, Pope John Paul II accelerated his retirement process and accepted his resignation shortly after he turned 75.
George Samuel Weakland was born in Patton, Pa., on April 2, 1927. (He took the name Rembert when he became a Benedictine monk.) His father, who ran a hotel that was destroyed in a fire, died of pneumonia when Archbishop Weakland was 5. His siblings at the time ranged in age from 6 months to 8 or 9 years.
Their mother, barely able to provide for her children, moved them to a home with no central heating.
“I just took it for granted all mothers would haul in the coal, and chop the wood,” the future archbishop told The Washington Post years later. “I remember those winters with her sleeping on the couch in the living room and keeping the fires going through the night.”
In the morning, he added, “we would run out of that bed, down, and of course the fires were always going and things were always the way they should be.”
A pastor at the local church noticed Archbishop Weakland’s musical talents and arranged free piano lessons from a nun. He was educated at Saint Vincent College, a Benedictine school in Latrobe, Pa., and was ordained as a priest in 1951. The Benedictine order encouraged his musical studies, sending him to the Juilliard School and eventually to Columbia University, where he received a doctoral degree in music in 2000. He led the Benedictine order from 1967 until his appointment as archbishop in 1977.
Complete survivor information was not immediately available.
Archbishop Weakland wrote extensively in his memoir about his abiding struggle with his sexuality. He realized when he was in his teens that he was gay, he wrote, but “feared even admitting it to myself.” He allowed himself to pursue relationships with men after becoming archbishop, he told the New York Times, because of “loneliness that became very strong.”
He also expressed his regret about the church’s treatment of victims of sexual abuse by priests.
“If I have any sadness, it is that we have made too little progress in understanding and helping victims regain a full life,” he wrote. “Too many seem to be left in anger.”
Emily Langer is a reporter on The Washington Post’s obituaries desk. She writes about extraordinary lives in national and international affairs, science and the arts, sports, culture, and beyond. She previously worked for the Outlook and Local Living sections. Twitter