c. 2004 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ A soft-spoken bishop from Washington state whose diocese is poised to declare bankruptcy was elected Monday (Nov. 15) as leader of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops.

Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane was elected to a three-year term as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a vote of confidence for a top bishop whose diocese is now tainted by the national sex abuse scandal.

Skylstad, 70, said last week that his diocese cannot afford to pay “tens of millions” to settle abuse-related lawsuits, and expects to follow bishops in Portland, Ore., and Tucson, Ariz., as the third U.S. diocese to seek bankruptcy protection this year.

“I have no doubt that the days ahead will continue to be days of both blessings and challenges for all of us,” Skylstad told his fellow bishops Monday. “It would be easy to be intimidated by the challenges. … We together can look forward to the future with hope and joy.”

While Skylstad refused interview requests, the Rev. Tom Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America, said the bankruptcy that will likely overshadow Skylstad’s tenure is a sign of the times for the scandal-scarred American church.

“This is the church today,” Reese said. “I don’t think you could elect anybody and guarantee that his diocese is not headed towards bankruptcy.”

Skylstad has been groomed for the top post since he was elected vice president in 2001. Although he was elected on the first ballot, he won just 52 percent of the vote _ a low margin that some observers said may signal hesitancy among the bishops to elevate a prelate who may be preoccupied by financial matters at home.

In an election that caught some off-guard, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago beat out eight other candidates to serve as Skylstad’s vice president, setting him in line to assume the top job in three years. He is the first sitting cardinal to be elected to a leadership post.

George, 67, is one of 13 American cardinals, and is known for embracing an orthodox interpretation of church doctrine and allegiance to the Vatican. Before he was promoted to Chicago, George succeeded Skylstad as bishop of Yakima, Wash., when Skylstad was transferred to Spokane in 1990.

George is also the chairman of a key “mixed commission” of Vatican and U.S. church officials who are overseeing revisions to the bishops’ landmark sex abuse reforms adopted in 2002. He told reporters he does not expect a change of direction under Skylstad.

“I think Bishop Skylstad is as dedicated to keeping those promises as anyone else,” he said.

A suit against the Spokane diocese involving a former priest who was defrocked in 1986, Patrick O’Donnell, was scheduled to start on Nov. 29. Skylstad earlier announced that attempts to settle 28 separate claims _ including five involving O’Donnell _ had failed.

One bishop who has already declared bankruptcy, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, said the Chapter 11 process demand a bishop’s full attention, but the work of the church _ including at the national level _ must go on. Still, he conceded Skylstad might be somewhat distracted from the work ahead of him.

“I’m sure if Bishop Skylstad were here, he would say that his first priority is to his diocese and the work that has to be done there,” Kicanas said.

Both Skylstad and George came under immediate scrutiny from victims’ advocates. David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said both have been “increasingly combative” with victims’ groups, with George resisting an Illinois extension of the civil and criminal statute of limitations in abuse cases.

“It’s hard to point to any real substantive reform that either of them can cite,” Clohessy said.

Skylstad is known as an easy-going moderate who works quietly and diligently behind the scenes. He helped draft a regional bishops’ environmental statement on the Columbia River and has been active in social justice ministries. He has also taken a middle-of-the-road position on denying Communion to Catholic politicians who dissent from church teaching, most notably on abortion.

“I strong oppose using Eucharist as a weapon,” he said in a June statement printed in his diocesan newspaper. “… We have neither need nor call to take God’s gifts _ God’s plowshares if you will _ and turn them into weapons of divisiveness and anger.”

The bishops will continue their annual meeting here through Thursday. Much of their agenda consists of routine workaday business, although the bishops are expected to approve a third annual audit to measure whether they have implemented the 2002 reforms.

The bishops’ outgoing president, Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., closed out his term reflecting on the “extraordinary challenges” of a tenure in which he oversaw the church’s response to the abuse scandal.

Gregory, who received wide acclaim for his handling of the scandal, said the church received a “good deal of criticism,” some that was “misdirected and even unfair and unjust.” He grew emotional at the standing ovation he received from other bishops.

“I am sorry for the mistakes and missteps that I have made,” Gregory said, “and I hope that you and the members of the church that I love so deeply have been able to forgive me for those.”

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