From an important article by Rod Dreher: "Uncle Ted’s Family Tradition":
'[Cardinal] Spellman’s homosexuality is no secret.... Cardinal William O’Connell, archbishop of Boston from 1907 to 1944, was gay. So too was Cardinal John Wright, made an auxiliary bishop of Boston in 1947 under O’Connell’s successor, Cardinal Richard Cushing. Wright went on to become the Bishop of Worcester, Mass. Engel writes:
'....Donald Wuerl became private secretary to Bishop Wright not long after his 1966 ordination. He moved into Wright’s residence in Pittsburgh, and of course followed him to Rome, after Wright was named Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy — that is, head of the Vatican’s apparatus for overseeing priests worldwide. The New York Times obituary for the cardinal said:'"Meanwhile, he enjoyed the trappings of his post in the Vatican. He shared his fifth‐floor apartment with his secretary, the Rev. Donald Wuerl, whom he had taken with him from Pittsburgh. The apartment was said to be crammed with stereo equipment and his many books. Cardinal Wright enjoyed long conversations over a large dinner of pasta and he once said that he “confessed to Romanitas.” [In this context, affection for the culture and style of Vatican life. — RD]"
'Guilt by association is a fallacy. We do not know that Cardinal Wuerl is gay, or personally guilty of any sexual misconduct. I am not here asserting, or even insinuating, that he is.
'But there is reason to believe that Wuerl’s great mentor, spiritual father, and patron, the cardinal he served for 13 years, was an active homosexual, and indeed — on Bill Burnett’s testimony — a pederast. What, if anything, did Donald Wuerl know about Cardinal Wright’s private life? Was Wright personally compromised? What did Wright teach him about how to think about sexual activity among priests? Given what Richard Sipe has said about the “genealogical” aspect of clerical sexual abuse and misconduct — that is, this phenomenon passing down through the clerical ranks by sexually active prelates and seminary rectors recruiting and promoting those who share their sexual enthusiasm — the questions ought to be asked.'
- From an article called Double Lives: The Peril of Clerical Hypocrisy in the liberal Catholic Commonweal Magazine by Kenneth L. Woodward:
'Wright was an intellectually gifted churchman whose reputation as a liberal in the Spellman era rested chiefly on his interest in literature and the arts and his voluminous essays on those subjects and others published in liberal Catholic magazines, including this one. In 1969, at the age of sixty, Pope Paul VI chose Wright to head the Congregation for Priests in Rome and elevated him to cardinal. It was there, in the frenzied initial years of the post-council era, that I first heard stories of his leading a double life rather openly with a younger lover. What interests me now is not the private details of this double life, but whether it influenced how he ran the congregation overseeing the selection, training, and formation of the clergy. Donald Wuerl, who recently resigned as archbishop of Washington D.C., would surely know the truth about Wright. Wuerl’s first assignment after ordination at the age of thirty-one was as secretary to then Bishop Wright of Pittsburgh in 1966. The younger priest was said to be closer to the cardinal than the hair on his head. He became Wright’s omnipresent full-time personal assistant when the latter moved to Rome, even sitting in for him during the papal conclave that elected John Paul II.'
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