By of the Journal Sentinel
Retired Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who had hoped to return to the Benedictine monastery where he began his religious life more than 70 years ago, will not be going after all.
Weakland, 87, had planned to move from Milwaukee to St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pa., by Sept. 1. But the retired prelate told Milwaukee’s Catholic Herald that the archabbot there asked him to postpone those plans indefinitely.
“Personally, I wanted to get back to the monastery and get back to the monastic routine,” Weakland said in a story published on the Herald’s Web site on Tuesday. “It’s always been a part of who I am, but it doesn’t seem as if it will work out.”
Weakland’s impending departure was the subject of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on Sunday. He was to be the guest of honor at a July 17 farewell luncheon organized by priests — an event that was drawing criticism from clergy sex abuse survivors who see him as complicit in crimes against them.
The Rev. James Connell, former vice chancellor of the archdiocese and now a victim advocate, sent an open letter to Weakland asking him to cancel the luncheon and take other steps to assuage the concerns of survivors.
Repeated attempts to reach Weakland and the abbey over the last 10 days have been unsuccessful. Neither Weakland nor Archabbott Douglas R. Nowicki in Latrobe returned telephone calls seeking comment Monday and Tuesday.
A source told the Journal Sentinel on Monday that the archbishop’s plans had changed, but it could not be independently verified. And the reversal appeared to be news to at least some of his supporters.
Weakland led the Milwaukee archdiocese from 1977 to 2002. He retired after it became public that he used $450,000 in church funds in a failed attempt to silence a former male lover who years earlier accused him of date rape.
In the archdiocese bankruptcy, filed to address its mounting sex abuse claims, Weakland has admitted in depositions that he moved abusive priests from parish to parish without divulging their histories.
St. Vincent, in Latrobe, has had its own difficulties. It has been in a dispute with the Rev. Mark Gruber, a former monk and anthropology professor who was accused and then cleared by a state investigation of allegations involving child pornography. Gruber later sued Nowicki and others for defamation, though the case was dropped. In 2013, the Vatican stripped Gruber of his collar, finding that he had possessed child pornography and that he persuaded a former junior monk to make false sexual misconduct allegations against Nowicki, according to news accounts.
Weakland told the Herald that Nowicki welcomed him to return to the abbey during a visit last year, but that he needed time to deal with the fallout from the Gruber problems. Weakland said Nowicki now decided his arrival might impede the community’s healing.
