Wuerl says he forgot allegations against McCarrick
he said was included in a report sent to the Vatican. The ex-priest, in testimony then to the Pittsburgh Diocese’s Review Board, said Father McCarrick pressured seminarians to sleep in double beds with him, requested and gave the subordinate unwanted back rubs and caused Mr. Ciolek trauma because he knew that Mr. Ciolek had been abused by clergy as a teen.
When Mr. Ciolek first went public last week with evidence that Cardinal Wuerl had been untruthful since the scandal erupted last summer, Cardinal Wuerl’s office issued a statement saying he had only been trying to protect Mr. Ciolek’s confidentiality. Then in a Saturday letter to the archdiocese’s priests, Cardinal Wuerl repeated his claim that he was protecting confidentiality and said he had denied knowledge only as it pertained to allegations that Father McCarrick had abused children.
In the Tuesday night letter, Wuerl repeated versions of those defenses but said it didn’t matter.
“Nonetheless, it is important for me to accept personal responsibility and apologize for this lapse of memory. There was never the intention to provide false information,” the letter said.
He noted he had apologized to Mr. Ciolek, whose requests to meet Cardinal Wuerl were rebuffed for several weeks prior. Mr. Ciolek had asked repeatedly to meet but was told no after negotiating with the archdiocese’s lawyer, who had suggested limits on the talk, such as no “interviewing” Cardinal Wuerl, no recording and no note-taking, Mr. Ciolek told The Post. This was in the days before Mr. Ciolek went public with the fact that Cardinal Wuerl knew in 2004.
“I wanted to apologize for any additional grief my failure might have also brought the survivor,” he wrote.
It was not immediately possible Tuesday night to reach Mr. Ciolek, a married lawyer who reached a settlement in 2005 with several New Jersey dioceses over abuse and harassment he says he suffered by three clerics as a teen and then in seminary. One of them was allegedly Father McCarrick.
The reaction of the D.C. Catholic community, weary after six months of scandal alleged by their current and last archbishops, wasn’t easy to predict.
Cardinal Wuerl over the years was seen as an efficient and moderate, if bureaucratic, leader of the healthy, diverse archdiocese — until last summer, when Father McCarrick was suspended after allegedly groping an altar boy and questions arose about widespread rumors that Father McCarrick had been sexually harassing seminarians for years. Cardinal Wuerl was also painted in a report by a Pennsylvania grand jury as not fully reliable in his handling of sex abuse. The report looked at hundreds of clerics.
A Washington Post investigation about the grand jury report found that while Cardinal Wuerl built a reputation as an early advocate for removing pedophile priests from parishes, at times he allowed accused clerics to continue as priests in less visible roles without alerting authorities or other officials.
Cardinal Wuerl’s apology comes at a key time. The Vatican is hoping to wrap up things related to the D.C. scandals before a first global meeting next month about clergy sex abuse and how to hold bishops and cardinals more accountable. Allegations that Father McCarrick abused several children and harassed many seminarians are being heard by a Vatican administrative trial, and some church lawyers think he might see his priestly status stripped. It’s possible Pope Francis will decide a penalty, if any, for Father McCarrick. Cardinal Wuerl’s successor is also to be named.
Although Cardinal Wuerl’s denials have centered on his claim that Mr. Ciolek requested confidentiality, documents from the time challenge the cardinal’s framework.
In 2004, Cardinal Wuerl’s office asked Mr. Ciolek for permission to take his complaint about Father McCarrick to the Vatican. Mr. Ciolek wrote back that he would be fine with that but to please keep his name out of it, if possible. Either way, Mr. Ciolek wrote in approving the specific request, he was fine with his experience being told to church officials.
The Pittsburgh and D.C. dioceses in the past week have said this proves Cardinal Wuerl was unable to come forward. But Mr. Ciolek’s 2004 request for his name to be kept out of it was specific to the request made by Pittsburgh.