Francis accepts Cardinal Wuerl's resignation - Update

Update - I've provide links to a couple of other takes on this development at the bottom of the post.

In a subtle and fairly complex gesture, Pope Francis accepted Cardinal Donald Wuerl's resignation as Archbishop of Washington DC earlier today.  Despite being under fire for allegedly being implicated in a group of sex-abuse and corruption scandals, Wuerl remains a cardinal, and Francis has appointed him as apostolic administrator of the diocese until a successor can be named.

Gerard O'Connell of America has the story:

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., the Vatican announced at noon (Rome time), Oct. 12. At the same time, the Archdiocese of Washington released a letter from the pope to the cardinal in which he asked him to remain as “apostolic administrator” of the archdiocese until his successor is appointed. It also made public a statement from the cardinal as he stepped down. 

In a two page-letter, Pope Francis made clear not only his personal esteem for the cardinal but also that he stands by him, and the reasons for this.

We looked in on Cardinal Wuerl's embattled position last month here at NewGathering.  At that time we noted that he was in the midst of two simultaneous hurricanes: the allegations about then-Cardinal McCarrick's long history of abusing seminarians; and the explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report that cast an unflattering light on six PA dioceses, including Pittsburgh during Wuerl's tenure there as bishop before he moved to Washington DC.  O'Connor notes that a third tsunami, in the form of Archbishop Vigano's mostly-uncorroborated "testimony" about how Rome allegedly mishandled McCarrick's history, also attempted to implicate Wuerl.

As is required of all bishops, Cardinal Wuerl had submitted his resignation to Francis when he turned 75, back in 2015.  It's common for a pope not to immediately accept a bishop's resignation, essentially leaving him in place at the pontiff's pleasure, sometimes for several additional years.  What Francis has done today is choose this particular moment to finally accept Wuerl's resignation.  But he is not removing Wuerl from the diocese, nor levying any sort of punishment.  He is granting Wuerl the equivalent of an honorable discharge from service.

The letter from Francis to Wuerl, which is quite brief at little more than a page long, is available here, in English and Italian.  There is no note of chastisement in it, and in fact Francis seems to take pains to praise Wuerl.  Here is what may be the most interesting passage:

You have sufficient elements to "justify" your actions and distinguish between what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to commit some mistakes.  However, your nobility has led you not to choose this way of defense.  Of this, I am proud and thank you.

The English in this passage is kludgy (as an experiment, I ran the Italian original of this same paragraph through Google Translate; it came back nearly word for word the same - so close, in fact, that now I'm wondering whether the ecclesial interpreter used Google Translate for the first draft of the translation, and then made a couple of light touch-ups.  That in turn has me speculating whether using Google Translate might be a quality-control technique for services that do a lot of translating.).  

Here is how O'Connor at America interprets that passage of the letter: he first notes that it "appears to be a reference to the Pennsylvania grand jury report that faulted Wuerl’s handling of some abuse cases when he was bishop of Pittsburgh (1988-2006)".   O'Connor then writes,

In other words, Pope Francis made clear that he considers the cardinal’s actions then as “mistakes,” not a cover-up or neglecting to deal with problems of abuse, and acknowledged that the cardinal could have defended himself in this field. 

He warmly commended the cardinal for not engaging in self-defense ...

Not all assessments of Wuerl's record in Pittsburgh are positive: back in August, television news reporter Jake Tapper aired a report on CNN that took a look at the Pennsylvania grand jury's allegations about Wuerl during his time in Pittsburgh.  Tapper's report is only about four minutes long and provides what comes across as an objective and balanced assessment.  It suggests that Wuerl got some things right during his days in Pittsburgh  - but seems to have come up short on other occasions.

In the wake of today's development, CNN notes that abuse victim advocates are not in a mood to be serene about Wuerl's record:  

"Wuerl took the most vulnerable -- children -- and put them in harm's way. How could the Pope possibly call him a good shepherd? It sends the message to abuse victims that the Pope doesn't really care about them. He only cares about 'his people,'" said Becky Ianni, a Washington-area leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Perhaps this assessment of the Wuerl situation, in the CNN story, is as good as any:

John Carr, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, said the Pope's letter about Wuerl sends mixed messages, in part because the cardinal's record on abuse was itself mixed. 

"Wuerl was better than most (bishops), but not good enough, and that is part of the message today. Things are changing. Bishops are going to pay a price, even influential and effective bishops, even a bishop who did better than most."

Update 10/14/2018 11:10 ET:   In The Atlantic, Emma Green reviews the sequence of events that led to Francis accepting Wuerl's resignation, and suggest that that sequence "gave the resignation an air of controlled choreography".   And the NY Times editorial board is not impressed by Francis's action, declaring that "[t]he pope misses the point" and taking the view that "by indicating that he regards Cardinal Wuerl’s past actions simply as “mistakes,” and by allowing him to remain a member of the powerful Congregation for Bishops, the pope reinforces the sense that he does not understand the extraordinary damage done by clerics who cruelly and shamelessly abused their power over trusting children and adults."