On Friday, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the head of the Archdiocese of Washington. Wuerl submitted his letter of resignation three years ago, when he turned 75, as is customary for bishops. But in September, Wuerl traveled to Rome to urge the pope to finally accept it because of growing accusations over his role in handling sexual-abuse allegations in the Church.
It’s the first major American resignation to result from this round of the Church’s sex-abuse crisis. In certain ways, it is a hollow result: Wuerl was already in line to resign, and other, younger Church leaders have also been potentially implicated for their conduct. The end of Wuerl’s tenure in Washington is a symbolic step for the reeling American Catholic hierarchy, a sign that they are taking the crisis seriously. But much more will be needed to repair the image of the Catholic Church and the immense mistrust that has developed among believers.
[Read: The Catholic sex-abuse crisis has come for Pope Francis.]
Wuerl was a leading character in the Pennsylvania grand-jury report about abuse in six Catholic dioceses that was released over the summer. During the time he was the bishop of Pittsburgh, from 1988 to 2006, he wrote to the Vatican warning about sexual abusers within his diocese, calling pedophilia “incurable,” according to the report. But he also oversaw the reassignment of abusive priests, the report alleges, and even lent money to one cleric after accusations surfaced. Once the report was published, he faced pressure to resign, as well as backlash from home: At one Pittsburgh-area Catholic school named for Wuerl, vandals spray-painted over his name, apparently in protest.