Anti-clergy abuse advocates slam public funeral at cathedral for former Archbishop Weakland
Sophie Carson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Published 4:48pm CT, August 29, 2022
Advocates for victims of clergy abuse on Monday protested the public funeral for former Archbishop Rembert Weakland.
Weakland's funeral Mass is planned for 4:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, the seat of the Milwaukee Archdiocese. He died Aug. 22 in Greenfield.
Weakland will be buried in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, at St. Vincent Archabbey, where he attended high school, college and seminary and eventually became archabbot.
Weakland admitted in 2008 in a state court deposition that he shredded copies of sex abuse documents, failed to notify law enforcement officials and moved sexually abusive priests from parish to parish without warning members of their histories.
A private funeral Mass in Pennsylvania would have been better, the Rev. James Connell, a retired Catholic priest who was also vice chancellor of the Milwaukee Archdiocese, said at a news conference Monday outside the cathedral.
"Archbishop Rembert Weakland deserves no honor or praise because doing so would put salt in the wounds of victim-survivors of clergy sexual abuse," Connell said.
Connell also called on area priests to skip the funeral.
"Do not come to the funeral," he said. "Your absence from the funeral will provide support for all the victim-survivors and all people who in any way have suffered because of Weakland's evil actions."
Advocates said the public celebration of Weakland's life is insensitive to survivors and could cause additional harm.
"They are going to try, with this, to erase history, to eliminate our history as victims as if we never existed, as if this never happened. That is unacceptable," said Peter Isely of the anti-clergy abuse group Nate's Mission.
The group tied photos of roughly 80 abusive priests under Weakland's tenure to a fence outside the cathedral on Monday.
James Egan of the Illinois-based Archangel Foundation said the funeral shows that the archdiocese is not committed to making the church a safe place for children.
"That harm is being carried out and continued today and tomorrow," he said.
Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki, responded to the advocates' criticisms in a statement.
"A funeral Mass is not a glorification of a person's life, but rather an act of mercy for the dead during which we pray that, despite any failings in life, they may be received by a merciful God.
"We pray for all sexual abuse survivors and hope they can find healing and peace," he said.
Long considered one of America's most prominent liberal bishops, Weakland led the Milwaukee archdiocese from 1977 to 2002.
In the 2008 deposition, he acknowledged that he moved abusive priests to other parishes without warning because "no parish would have accepted a priest unless you could say that he has gone through the kind of psychological examination and that he’s not a risk to the parish."
The Vatican accepted his retirement promptly after he admitted he had used $450,000 in church funds to buy the silence of a male lover who years later broke that deal and accused him publicly of date rape.
Weakland maintained the relationship was consensual. The archbishop was in his early 50s and the accuser was in his early 30s when the encounter occurred.
Near the end of his tenure, Weakland shepherded a radical remodeling of the interior of the cathedral to modernize and reconfigure it. The funeral will take place within that renovated space.
Rows of pews were replaced by movable chairs, the altar was moved forward into the nave and the tabernacle was relocated to a side chapel.
Traditionalist Catholics criticized the renovation, saying it made the cathedral uglier and more "Protestant." But others hailed it as an upgrade that aligned with a post-Vatican II movement to connect clergy and lay people.
Then, in 2019, in response to pressure from church abuse victims and faithful, the archdiocese removed Weakland's name from the pastoral center at the cathedral and from a bas-relief inside depicting Weakland shepherding small children.
Contact Sophie Carson at (414) 223-5512 or scarson@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @SCarson_News.