He was known as an uncommonly forceful archbishop, a plainspoken
paladin who battled abortion, advocated for the poor and immigrants,
exhorted Catholics to live and vote church teachings, and quickly
removed sexually abusive priests.
In 14 years here, he grew to national prominence, a darling of church
conservatives and the bane of Catholic politicians who did not toe the
pro-life line. He would one day wear the red cap of a cardinal, the
pundits predicted. "Chicago," many whispered. It was heartland America,
like him.
So when the papal nuncio phoned July 5 to tell him he was bound for
Philadelphia, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput allows he was "genuinely
surprised."
The envoy "spent three minutes talking with me, maybe five," but gave
no marching orders, Chaput said in a recent interview in his
soon-to-be-vacated office looking out on the Rockies.
"Everybody thinks it's the way we've managed the sexual-abuse issues"
in Denver, he said of the whys and wherefores of his summons east. "But
nobody told me that."
On Thursday, this Franciscan-Capuchin friar with the Kansas twang and
the Potowatomi Indian lineage will be installed as the 13th head of the
1.5-million-member Archdiocese of Philadelphia, succeeding the retiring
archbishop, Cardinal Justin Rigali.
Compactly built and verbally quick, Chaput seems a decade younger
than his 66 years. Still, at an age synonymous with retirement, he
admits to some trepidation taking over a historic East Coast archdiocese
nearly four times more populous than the 400,000-member Denver flock.
"People ask me, can I do it?" he said. "I don't know."
The famously informal archbishop answered nearly all of his e-mail in
Denver, and gladly, because "I hate phone calls."
But he doesn't know
how accessible he can be in the Philadelphia archdiocese.
"I'm already getting hundreds of e-mails saying, 'You should do this,
and you should do that,' " he said. "I write back and say, 'I'm not the
bishop. Remind me of that when I get into place.' "
By taking his seat in the oak-and-velvet chair at the Cathedral
Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, Chaput assumes leadership of an
archdiocese nationally known over the last century for its staunch
traditionalism and, during the last six years, for its clergy sex-abuse
scandals.
After the release in February of a second Philadelphia grand jury
report, the District Attorney's Office arrested three current or former
priests and a former parochial-school teacher accused of raping two boys
in the 1990s.
In addition, a monsignor who headed the clergy office
under Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua was charged with child
endangerment.
The concussion from the report did not end there.
In March, Rigali
suspended dozens of priests who had allegedly abused minors or engaged
in other misconduct. The complex investigation of those cases, and their
disposition, now falls into Chaput's hands.
Some of the accused clergy have been among his many e-mailers. Their
cases have been "dragging on too long," Chaput said they told him, and
beseeched him not to delay in deciding their fates.
He wants the cases resolved "as promptly as it can be done," he said.
But "these are not decisions as bishop you can make alone, and make
well, especially if you're new to a diocese."
He admitted, "I don't look forward to it." Whatever he decides "will
be painful for some: for the individual priest, his family, [or] for the
people who are victimized and want some redress."
Before restoring or dismissing any priest, he said, he will consult
the archdiocesan review board, the priests' council, his auxiliary
bishops, and the team Rigali appointed in March to investigate the
allegations, some of which date back decades.
Rigali did not make those accusations public, and Chaput said he likely will follow suit, even after the cases are decided.
"People have a right to privacy - both the people who claim they were
victimized and the priests who claim they are innocent," Chaput said.
He has read some of the 2005 grand jury report that named 63 priests
as sex abusers and accused his predecessors - Bevilacqua and the late
Cardinal John Krol - of an "immoral" and "massive coverup" of the
crimes. He said he intends to finish that report and the shorter 2011
report before his installation.
He said he also hoped to meet with District Attorney Seth Williams, whose prosecutors wrote the second report.
While Chaput has a reputation for swiftly removing credibly accused
priests, some abuse victims and their advocates worry he was sent to
Philadelphia for another reason: to quash efforts in the state
legislature to give victims expanded opportunities to sue their abusers.
In 2006, Chaput put together a coalition that defeated a bill to open
a temporary "window" in Colorado's civil statute for adults who were
abused as children.
In batting down such legislation, "he set the standard for other
dioceses across the United States. He wrote the playbook." said Susan
Matthews, founder of Catholics4Change, an abuse victim's blog. "That's
why he was put here."
Despite her qualms, however, she said Chaput has not only responded
personally to her e-mails - something Rigali never did - but was
surprisingly friendly.
And that, she said, is "a real change in culture."
Souvenirs from Denver
Soon, visitors to the archbishop's office in archdiocesan
headquarters in Center City will likely find Chaput seated in a chair of
buffalo hide - one of two given to him by the Indian community of Rapid
City, S.D., where he was bishop from 1988 to 1997.
They are among the few souvenirs of his Denver tenure that he is bringing with him.
His life in Denver was "certainly less formal" than his predecessors'
in Philadelphia, he said. "I drive myself. I go shopping for groceries.
I go to the drugstore to buy toothpaste."
But will he change Philadelphia's formal ways, or will they change him?
In Denver, he sold the big bishop's house, and used the proceeds to
build a smaller home on the grounds of the archdiocese's campus-like
headquarters.
But he gives no hint what he might do with the cardinal's stone
mansion on City Avenue in West Philadelphia, and its six acres of gated
grounds, where Krol once installed a par-3 golf hole.
"It's been the residence of the bishop for a long time," he said.
"Also, I'm going to be bishop there for the rest of my active career. It
belongs to the church, not to me."
He predicted it would take about two years to become fully acquainted
with his new bailiwick, comprising 2,183 square miles in the city and
four Pennsylvania suburban counties. To do that, he said, he plans to
devote three days a week to meet with the public, three days to do
administrative work, and "one day to pray and read and write."
Told that his friend, conservative Catholic columnist George Weigel,
recently praised him for instilling in Denver a "dynamic Catholic
identity in an exceptionally secular environment," Chaput shrugged off
the compliment. "I don't sit about analyzing myself," he said.
But minutes later he noted that 42 percent of Denver Catholics say
they regularly attend Sunday Mass. That is well above the 30 percent in
the Philadelphia archdiocese, and in the church nationwide.
Chaput reluctantly took some credit for the turnout in Denver, saying
it might reflect his "very energetic view" of how his priests should
preach the gospel.
He preached nearly every Saturday evening at the Denver cathedral. He
plans to continue that practice in Philadelphia "so that the people who
want to hear the bishop preach can come every week."
Rigali was not a
regular in the cathedral pulpit.
Good preaching, Chaput said, "is the way to get people energized. So a
renewal of preaching does lead to a renewal of the church. Jesus said
it all. We just have to make sure it's heard."
Living the faith
Chaput is a man who speaks his mind, and the mind of his church, with chiseled words.
"If we don't help the poor," he said in the interview in Denver, "we're going to hell."
In his 2008 book Render Unto Caesar, he wrote, "Catholics
who live so anonymously that no one knows their faith . . . aren't
really living as 'Catholics' at all."
He went on to observe that
"American democracy depends on people of character fighting for their
beliefs . . . forcefully and without apology."
Expect that of Chaput in Pennsylvania - his old stamping ground as a
student at St. Fidelis Seminary in Butler County, and as head of the
Capuchins' Pittsburgh-based province.
Less than three weeks after his installation, he will be in
Harrisburg for a breakfast and Mass for Catholic legislators - subject
as yet unannounced.
But if history is any measure, he will talk tough. In a 2006 guest
homily at a Mass in Harrisburg, he told Catholic jurists and lawmakers,
"Stuffing your Catholic faith in a closet isn't good manners. It's
cowardice."
Like all Catholic prelates, Chaput takes an in-your-faith approach to
abortion. Yet, he said, he views life issues as a "seamless garment,"
as articulated by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.
"It means
consistency in our teachings, that what we say about abortion we should
say about other life issues," Chaput said.
"Protecting the environment is a life issue because we have to live
in this beautiful world God has given us. But whether or not we drink
water from plastic bottles is not nearly as important as whether or not
we respect life from the moment of conception until death."
It is a message Chaput will surely bring east with him. His new flock
should also be prepared to hear the call to "personal transformation"
like they've never heard it before.
"There's no real renewal unless it's personal," Chaput said in the
interview. "Personal means profoundly embraced, in the depth of who you
are. But we're at the same time communal, so we do it together."
After 14 years of that togetherness in Denver, he said, it will be hard to leave.
"When you get get made a bishop of another diocese you change
families. It's not that you just change jobs," he said.
"It's really
hard to change a family you love and embrace, and embrace another family
who you come to love."