Cardinal Wuerl's name taken off Pittsburgh school due to scandal

(Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh on Wednesday said it had removed Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s name from a high school after a grand jury report on sex abuse in the Church found he reassigned some priests who had been accused of abusing children.

FILE PHOTO: The Archbishop of Washington, Donald Wuerl, greets schoolchildren at the Vatican Embassy in Washington September 24, 2015. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

Prior to his current role as archbishop of Washington, Wuerl served as bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006. The grand jury report did not accuse him of personally sexually abusing children.

The Pittsburgh diocese said in a statement that Wuerl last week asked that his name be removed from Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School after the release of the report. The school has been renamed North Catholic High School.

Wuerl on Saturday canceled a planned speech at this week’s World Meeting of Families in Dublin, the second high-ranking U.S. Church official to do so.

A two-year Pennsylvania investigation found evidence that at least 1,000 people, mostly children, had been sexually abused by some 300 clergymen during the past 70 years. The report said the numbers of actual victims and abusers could be much higher.

It was the most wide-ranging U.S. investigation into sexual abuse by priests since the scandal burst into the public eye in Boston in 2002.

Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Editing by David Gregorio

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