The ongoing sexual abuse crisis in the Church has hit us with full force following the revelations concerning Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, and the Pennsylvania grand jury report. Once again, we were confronted with a tsunami of evil: the evil of those who perpetrated unspeakable crimes against children and young people; and...Read More

Going forward, it is not merely a matter of adopting best practices or working harder. What is most needed is deep repentance, beginning with us, your bishops. What is needed is a purification of the whole Church.Read More

Stay close to Mary, ask her to intercede for you and for your classmates and do count on my prayers even as I ask you to pray for me now and again.Read More

It would be wonderful if we could always arrive for Mass with only joy and hope. Yet most of us, myself included, celebrate this Mass with a sense of grief and anguish. It is a grief and an anguish brought about by the sexual abuse crisis that continues to trouble deeply even the most faithful...Read More

As a bishop, I am deeply humbled by such abject failure as I stand before you tonight, and not only humbled but haunted by the enormity and evil of this crisis. As best I can, I shall strive to listen to and walk with the laity in searching for and implementing meaningful and further reforms.Read More

The only way forward in this difficult hour is to center our lives on Christ and through Christ to give the Spirit access to our hearts. In that way, instead of clergy and laity growing apart from one another, we will strive in God’s grace to repair broken relationships, to heal those who have been...Read More

We celebrate Mary’s triumph in a moment that feels rather like the Church’s nadir. Mary, who witnessed the betrayal of her son and the cowardice of his disciples, knows, better than we do, what we are going through, why we feel as we do, and she is close to us with an amazingly tender maternal love . ....Read More

As you’d imagine, there are various proposals on how to move forward. Whatever takes shape, I think it will be important that it is rooted in deep repentance on the part of bishops, that it entails openness and honesty, that it involves the laity, and that is more than a matter of new policies and...Read More