And is he up to the task of healing the scars of the city’s Catholic sexual abuse scandals?
By Michelle Boorstein , Michelle Boorstein Religion reporter Email Bio Follow Julie Zauzmer and Julie Zauzmer Reporter covering religion, faith and spirituality Email Bio Follow Sarah Pulliam Bailey Sarah Pulliam Bailey Reporter covering religion Email Bio Follow April 14 at 9:00 PM When the first Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis erupted in the early 2000s, Wilton Gregory led hundreds of defensive and divided bishops in passing the most aggressive action on abuse in U.S. church history.
“His face was ashen. ‘You what?’ ” she recalls him saying. At 55, that was, she believed, Gregory’s first experience with laypeople who went outside the chain of command. With the Archdiocese of Washington since last summer the epicenter of the national crisis, Gregory, 71, once again steps in as the head of a church in turmoil. In what is arguably his most important American leadership pick so far, Pope Francis has chosen Gregory to replace Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who resigned six months ago because of complaints about his handling of abuse claims.But the U.S.
In 1958, his mother and grandmother enrolled him as a sixth-grader in a parochial school for a better education. Gregory was ordained a priest in Chicago in 1973 in his mid-20s and soon after went to get a doctorate in sacred liturgy in Rome. After finishing his degree, Gregory became a protege of one of the major figures of the U.S. church of that era: Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.
“Cardinal Bernardin left a legacy of dilution of Catholic teaching and subversion of the fight to protect unborn babies and their mothers,” the Catholic Laity for Orthodox Bishops and Reform, a group of D.C. conservatives, wrote in a statement urging the pope to pick someone else. Playing to the middle Gregory had been a seminarian during another period of upheaval, when the Black Power and civil rights movements challenged the status quo in the church.
Gregory embraced the spiritual revolution, in the 1980s helping to create a hymnal that would become the standard for black parishes. But he did not side with the aims of a more radical group of black priests who declared the church “a white racist institution,” Cressler said. Gregory now will arrive in the nation’s capital when racial friction is at the forefront of American life. The church also has a strong presence in the city’s large black community, including its sizable middle class. Black Catholics make up about 13 percent of the Washington Archdiocese, compared to about 3 percent for the nation as a whole. Many black city leaders are Catholic or went to Catholic schools, including Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and her predecessors Adrian Fenty and Anthony A.
“At a time when very few people showed courage on clerical sex abuse, he did,” said John Carr, an abuse victim who for years was a high-level advocate in the bishops’ conference and worked closely with Gregory. “Lots of people were saying: ‘Too far, too fast, it’s the media, it’s the lawyers,’ and he wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer.”
It was a gesture that Pope Francis would also become known for in a far brighter spotlight. And Gregory has been compared to Francis in his willingness to offend those on the right by making bold declarations for inclusion.Last fall, Gregory invited to Atlanta the Rev. James Martin, a popular writer and advocate for LGBT inclusion in the church. The invitation drew protests by some Catholics who say Martin is outside the church’s teaching.
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