c. 2006 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON _ Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick as leader of the Archdiocese of Washington on Tuesday (May 16) and named Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh as his successor.
McCarrick had been the most prominent Catholic voice in the nation’s capital since his installation in 2001, speaking to the young in church-themed happy hours and the powerful in the halls of Congress. In accordance with church law, McCarrick submitted his resignation when he turned 75 last summer.
Archbishop-designate Wuerl, 65, said he was somewhat daunted by the prospect of tracing McCarrick’s steps through the corridors of Washington.
“To follow in such large footprints requires an enormous amount of courage and support,” Wuerl said at church headquarters in Hyattsville, Md.
Wuerl will be formally installed June 22, and the Washington position puts him in line to become a cardinal with a vote to elect the next pope. McCarrick, who plans to continue living in Washington, remains a cardinal and retains his vote in a conclave until age 80.
As bishop to the approximately 800,000 Catholics in Pittsburgh since 1988, Wuerl has been known as a teacher and appeared more interested in church doctrine than national politics. Meeting with reporters Tuesday, the incoming archbishop said he would work to build consensus and that the “collective voice” of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was more powerful than that of any single prelate.
Almost immediately, however, Wuerl was asked to wade into thorny thickets such as immigration, abortion and “The Da Vinci Code.” At first he fended off questions with humor and pleas for patience, saying he had “not been here long enough to know how to get back and forth to the cathedral.”
When pressed, the soft-spoken new archbishop said his political philosophy is pragmatic rather than liberal or conservative, and said he prefers the role of pastor to that of political activist.
Wuerl may be recognized by many outside his Pennsylvania diocese through his book and television show “The Teachings of Christ.”
Among fellow bishops, Wuerl is known as “an extraordinary teacher,” McCarrick said. “Whenever he speaks at the bishops’ conference, we all listen and we all learn something.”
As archbishop of Washington, Wuerl will become the church’s unofficial liaison to the federal government, and will inherit McCarrick’s task of responding to Catholic politicians who publicly disagree with church teaching on abortion, gay rights, the death penalty and the Iraq war.
Last summer, as the Vatican and U.S. bishops debated whether to serve the sacrament of Holy Communion to politicians who support abortion rights, Wuerl spoke out for a “greater cooperation among the bishops in a given territory.” And while calling abortion “intrinsically evil,” Wuerl said “the pastoral tradition of the Church places the responsibility” on those who present themselves for Holy Communion.
On Tuesday, Wuerl walked a similar line through the national debate on immigration, which, he said, will be “hammered out in another forum.”
While seeming to separate the spiritual from the political realms, Wuerl did say that he hoped the Church’s teachings on the dignity of each individual will be heeded.
(Also on Tuesday, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ committee on migration criticized President Bush’s plan to place soldiers from the National Guard on the U.S.-Mexican border. “There has not been an adequate public discussion about its implications,” said Bishop Gerald R. Barnes of San Bernardino, Calif.)
Benedict also accepted the resignation of Bishop Joseph L. Imesch of Joliet, Ill., and named Bishop J. Peter Sartain of Little Rock, Ark., as his successor.
KRE/PH END BURKE
Editors: To obtain photos of Wuerl and McCarrick, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.
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