Thursday, July 24, 2014, 1:42 a.m.
Updated 22 hours ago
Retired Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who fell from grace in the Roman Catholic Church amid a sex and financial scandal, had hoped to return to St. Vincent Archabbey on Sept. 1 to live out his final days.
But the archabbey has withdrawn its invitation to the elderly cleric, he said.
Weakland, 87, said Archabbot Douglas Nowicki broke the news during a phone call last month, despite his ties to the Benedictine monastery for more than seven decades.
“He asked me to postpone indefinitely my coming,” Weakland told the Tribune-Review in a phone interview. “You don't want to interfere in the house, so I'm going to stay here. I did want to spend my final days there.”
Kim Metzgar, director of public relations at the archabbey in Westmoreland County, declined to comment.
Once a leading and influential voice in the Catholic Church on theological and social issues, Weakland was toppled in the church hierarchy in 2002 by a disclosure that he paid $450,000 in diocesan funds to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who claimed he was the archbishop's lover.
In his book, “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop,” Weakland revealed he is gay.
Read more: http://triblive.com/news/westmoreland/6494915-74/weakland-vincent-archabbey#ixzz38Ru4FxVo
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