McCarrick Crony Rumored to Replace Wuerl in Washington DC

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WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - A longtime associate of Theodore McCarrick is rumored to become the new head of the archdiocese of Washington, D.C.

Catholic News Agency is reporting that Pope Francis has asked Atlanta, Georgia's Abp. Wilton Gregory, a leading liberal in the Church, to take the helm in the Washington archdiocese. It remains unclear whether Gregory has accepted the offer.

Gregory was originally an auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese of Chicago for 11 years and was a protegé of Cdl. Joseph Bernardin, who actively promoted homosexuality and a "seamless garment" philosophy that saw poverty, joblessness and other social justice issues as weighty as abortion.

Gregory has a well-known record for promoting homosexuality, women priests and Holy Communion for the civilly remarried. He was a close ally of disgraced homosexual predator Theodore McCarrick, working closely with him when Gregory was president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2001–2004.

McCarrick came under fire in 2004 for mischaracterizing a memo sent from Cdl. Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in response to a query about Canon 915. The query had come during a heated presidential race involving pro-abortion Catholic John Kerry. Ratzinger had made clear in his memo that Canon 915 made it mandatory for bishops to deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians.

The only two U.S. prelates who knew the contents of the memo were McCarrick and Gregory.

McCarrick went on to falsely claim to his brother bishops that the Ratzinger memo made Canon 915 optional with regard to denying Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians. Gregory helped him perpetuate the fraud.

The late Richard Sipe, an expert on clerical sex abuse, whose years-long warnings about McCarrick were prescient and entirely accurate but often ignored by Church officials, claimed in a 2006 article that Gregory is homosexual.

As archbishop of Atlanta, Gregory has done the following;

• Gave the keynote address to the 2017 yearly assembly for the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests (AUSCP), a dissident group that promotes married priesthood, contraception and loosening of restrictions on Church teaching on sexuality
• Held a retreat for Fortunate and Faithful Families, a dissenting, pro-LGBT group that rejects Church doctrine on chastity
• Invited homosexualit Jesuit Fr. James Martin to speak at an Atlanta Jesuit parish and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
• Supported pro-LGBT Atlanta drag show priest Msgr. Henry Gracz, who is pastor of Shrine of the Immaculate Conception; appointed him "spiritual director" to sex-abuse victims, and allows the parish to attend the annual Pride parade
• Was a featured speaker at the 2017 Boston College gathering of progressive-liberal theologians to endorse Holy Communion for civilly remarried Catholics, during which he claimed that Amoris Laetitia "challenges the church and its pastors to move beyond thinking that everything is black and white"
• In 2014 he apologized for moving into a 6,400 square-foot, $2.2 million mansion, saying, "I failed to consider the impact on the families throughout the archdiocese who, though struggling to pay their mortgages, utilities, tuition and other bills, faithfully respond year after year to my pleas to assist with funding our ministries and services"

Wuerl resigned in disgrace in October after a searing Pennsylvania grand jury report revealed Wuerl had shuffled and protected predator priests during his time as bishop in Pittsburgh, including paying hush money to a priest who was part of a child porn ring (claims Wuerl has never denied). Since his resignation, Catholics in Washington, D.C. have been requesting that Pope Francis send a faithful prelate to be their new shepherd. With the possible appointment of Gregory, a McCarrick crony, to Washington, critics say it's business as usual in the Church, and that the corruption and cover-up will continue.

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