Washington, USA - Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh was named by Pope Benedict XVI today as the new archbishop of Washington, succeeding Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick.
Bishop Wuerl, 65, has served as Pittsburgh's bishop since 1988, and has been described as one of the more prominent of the younger conservatives among the nation's church leadership.
Cardinal McCarrick submitted his resignation to the Vatican last July when he turned 75, as church policy requires.
The archdiocese of Washington serves 560,000 Catholics in Washington and suburban Maryland and Virginia, according to a statement announcing the move posted on the archdiocese's web site this morning. The archbishop in Washington traditionally has been among the nation's more visible religious figures, because of the regular contact with political leaders that the position brings. Popes have also traditionally elevated its leader to the rank of cardinal.
In a statement, Bishop Wuerl described thanked the Pope for his appointment to "this important archdiocese, which is in its own right a significant Catholic Center, but is all the more distinguished as the location of the nation's capital."
Bishop Wuerl was born in Pittsburgh and educated at Catholic University in Washington and the Gregorian University and the University of St. Thomas in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1966, and served as an assistant bishop in Seattle before taking up his post in Pittsburgh.
He is the host of a television program, "The Teaching of Christ," which is broadcast on CBS, the Christian Association cable channel and through national syndication, according to his official biography on the Diocese of Pittsburgh web site. It said that his catechism of the same name has been in print for 30 years. Bishop Wuerl's most recent book, "The Catholic Way," was published in 2001.
In 2003, he was mentioned as a possible successor to Cardinal Law Bernard Law of Boston, who was forced to resign in the face of widespread anger among parishioners over his handling of sexual abuse cases involving priests. At the time, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that Bishop Wuerl has "been roundly praised for his prudent handling of sexual abuse allegations within the Pittsburgh Diocese."
Last fall, after Cardinal McCarrick submitted his resignation, the archdiocese announced that it had been refused by Pope Benedict XVI. A spokeswoman said that the Cardinal would likely serve another two years.
But Cardinal McCarrick told reporters and editors of The Washington Post at a luncheon late last month that he expected to be replaced "soon."
He said his successor should be a "great leader," a "holy man," a "great teacher," should not be afraid of the media and should "be funny," the Post reported.
A blog that follows Catholic church politics, Whispers in the Loggia, wrote on April 27 that insider speculation had Bishop Wuerl succeeding Cardinal McCarrick in the near future. "Word is that the prime move behind the speeding-up of the process has been McCarrick himself, who his eager to continue his international work on behalf of the Holy See and other church entities," wrote the blog's author, Rocco Palmo, a Philadelphia-based writer for The Tablet, a Catholic Church weekly published in London.
Cardinal McCarrick has also spoken of his desire to shift to a slower pace and spend more time fishing at the Jersey Shore, according to a profile published last year in The Star-Ledger of Newark, where he served as archbishop from 1986 to 2000.
"Most people my age," he told the paper, "are dead."