Julia Duin at the WaTimes, with a lengthy profile of Archbishop Wuerl after a year
It’s comprehensive and thorough, looking at everything with his informal gatherings with Catholic members of Congress to his catechetical efforts:
According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 50 percent of the 475 men who will be ordained as priests this year in the United States attended a Catholic elementary school.
This is one reason why Archbishop Wuerl has spent much of his first year trying to overhaul the archdiocese’s inner-city school system. Soon after he arrived in Washington, the archbishop called in his catechists and said he wanted to hold a workshop for the archdiocese’s religious educators. On Oct. 5, 2,300 people attended the archdiocese’s first catechetical convocation to set a vision for religious education.
"We had to get everyone on the page with the same information," Archbishop Wuerl said. "Here are the number of students we have, here’s what it costs, here is where the deficits are, here is where our potential for addressing some of those deficits lie. And … how to guarantee Catholic education in the future for the diocese and how can we guarantee we won’t outprice it."
One of his concerns is that the Center City Consortium, a corporation created to fund eight inner-city schools, has run out of money.
"In the past 10 years, we have spent nearly $60 million," the archbishop said, "but the number of schools has gone from eight to 14. That has overtaxed the sources. The board is working to see how we can keep as much Catholic education in the [inner-city] as possible while also being able to pay for it."
It’s not that the archbishop is lax on fundraising.
His annual archbishop’s appeal is far ahead on donations, having raised $11.3 million in pledges, about $3 million more than it had at the same time last year. This year’s goal was $11.1 million.
Monsignor Ronald Jameson, rector of St. Matthew’s Cathedral downtown, said his parish pledged 114 percent of its goal for the appeal.
"I am very impressed with him," Monsignor Jameson said of the archbishop. "He is so organized. He spends a lot of time in preparation for ceremonies [at the cathedral] to make sure everyone is on the same page."