Protester shouts ‘Shame on you!’ as Washington archbishop
celebrates Mass
Sep 3, 2018
 |
| A member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, holds an image of Washington Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl during a protest Aug. 21 outside the headquarters of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington. Cardinal Wuerl is a former bishop of Pittsburgh. (Credit: CNS.) |
NEW YORK - Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the embattled archbishop of Washington, was interrupted while celebrating Sunday Mass by a protester enraged by comments he made regarding the Church’s response to clerical sex abuse.
“We have all been touched by recent events in the Church.
This parish Mass is really not the place to discuss them but I wanted just to
offer a brief thought,” Wuerl began his remarks.
“Where do we go from here as a Church? Where do we go in the
light of so much that has bruised and hurt all of us? As a Church we recognize
as we said in the homily why we are gathered here. We are people of faith.
We’re a family of faith. We can believe as we do in the healing power of god’s
holy spirit,” he continued.
Wuerl went on to mention the pope specifically, at which
point his remarks were disturbed.
“Shame on you,” yelled mass-goer Brian Garfield before
exiting the service.
Over the past three months, the Catholic Church in the
United States has been roiled by a crisis over the Church’s handing of sexual
abuse.
In June, reports first surfaced that former Cardinal
Theodore McCarrick, Wuerl’s predecessor, had engaged in decades of abuse of
seminarians and at least one minor. Pope Francis then took the rare decision of
removing McCarrick from the College of Cardinals in response.
Such news was followed by the devastating details found in a
Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report released in August that chronicled over seven
decades of systematic abuse of over 1,000 victims at the hands of 300 predator
priests.
Among the names mentioned in the report is Wuerl, who is
listed nearly 200 times with questions over his handling of certain abuser
priests during his time as bishop of Pittsburgh in the 1980s and 1990s.
Since then, the Catholic leader of the nation’s capital has
faced pressure in some corners to resign his post.
Wuerl, who is 77-years old, has formally given his letter of
resignation to the pope - an action mandated by canon law at age 75 - yet the
pope, to date, has not accepted it.
Francis himself has come under attack over the past two
weeks by the former papal representative to the United States who published an
explosive 11-page letter alleging that Francis knew about McCarrick’s history
and proceeded to cover it up.
While serious questions have been raised about the
credibility of such claims, Francis has refused to comment on them.
At Mass on Sunday, Wuerl said Francis was “the object of
considerable animosity,” at which point he was interrupted by Garfield.
Garfield later told CNN that he is a
lifelong Catholic and angered by Wuerl’s handling of cases in Pennsylvania.
“I don’t think he is a monster but I wish he would talk less
about defending himself and more about his failings,” said Garfield.
“Yes, my brothers and sisters, shame. I wish I could re-do
everything over these thirty years as a bishop and each time get it always
right. That’s not the case,” Wuerl said in response to the outburst.
“I do think together asking God’s mercy, pleading God’s
grace, recognizing we can move into light, I simply ask you to keep me, keep
all of those that have been abused, all of those who have suffered, all of the
Church in your prayers,” he continued.
“We adore you Christ and praise you because by your holy
cross you have redeemed the world,” he concluded to applause.
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