Pope John Paul II yesterday named Bishop Timothy M. Dolan, who formerly headed an American seminary in Rome and has most recently served as auxiliary bishop in St. Louis, to succeed Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee.
Archbishop Weakland retired in May after he acknowledged having paid a confidential $450,000 settlement to a man who said the archbishop sexually assaulted him in 1979, when the accuser was in his 30's.
Archbishop Weakland, one of the last outspoken liberals among the American bishops, is being succeeded by a traditionalist who has long had the confidence of Vatican officials.
Bishop Dolan, who is 52, served for five years in Washington as secretary to two successive papal representatives to the United States. Later, from 1994 to 2001, he was rector of the North American College, a seminary in Rome where American bishops send the students they have singled out for advancement. As a young priest, Bishop Dolan himself graduated from there.
As the American church's sexual abuse scandal escalated in the last six months, Bishop Dolan found himself in the midst of the controversy handling accusations in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, speaking to priests, parishes and the news media, and inviting victims to come forward.
"I've learned some very hard-won lessons," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. "One of them would be that it is impossible to exaggerate the gravity of the situation, and the suffering that victims feel, because I've spent the last four months being with them, crying with them, having them express their anger to me."
He said he had voted in favor of the new sexual abuse policy passed by the American bishops at their meeting in Dallas this month. "We can't do business as usual," he said. "Mistakes were made in the past because it was a little closed, a little clandestine, and we've got to be more open, more transparent."
At a news conference yesterday in Milwaukee, Bishop Dolan was introduced by Archbishop Weakland, who called him "a very wise and good choice at this moment of history for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee."
When Bishop Dolan was asked if his theological orientation differed from Archbishop Weakland's, he responded, "Titles of liberal and conservative don't cut much mustard with me."
Those who know him say that although he spent only five years as a parish priest, Bishop Dolan has an accessible, pastoral style and a strong sense of humor. They say that while he is a loyalist on church teaching, he is not a rigid or firebrand conservative.
Nevertheless, news of his appointment delighted conservative laypeople in Milwaukee who had clashed with Archbishop Weakland over issues like the prominence of women in leadership roles, seminary curriculums and renovations in the archdiocesan cathedral.
"He's really a Catholic," said Al Szews, president of the Milwaukee chapter of the conservative group Catholics United. "There are some prelates in this country who don't act very Catholic, because they're more interested in trying to change the church to what they think it ought to be rather than what Christ intended it to be. I think he loves the church and wants to promote the Catholic Church rather than change it in his own image and likeness."
Bishop Dolan has a doctorate in church history from the Catholic University of America, in Washington, and has published "Priests for the Third Millennium" (Our Sunday Visitor Press, 2000), a collection of his lectures to his students at the North American College.
In St. Louis, he has been living in the rectory at Our Lady of Sorrows, a parish where two priests accused of sexual abuse have recently been removed. In response to news organizations' inquiries in March about clergymen who had been accused of abuse and then reassigned to parish duties, Bishop Dolan responded by removing some of them, saying a stricter policy was now necessary. But others among the accused have been allowed by archdiocesan officials to remain in ministry, victims' advocates say.
"There are some with even active allegations against them that they've continued to let minister," said Steven Pona, a member of the St. Louis chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.
Bishop Dolan will arrive in a Milwaukee Archdiocese still reeling from the disclosure about its archbishop. The archdiocese is home to more than 680,000 Catholics, 234 parishes and 255 active diocesan priests.
Bishop Dolan is to be installed as archbishop on Aug. 28.