The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh has removed Cardinal Donald Wuerl's name from the title of a high school after a grand jury report on sex abuse in the diocese found he had reassigned priests accused of abusing children.
The diocese said the removal was at the cardinal's own request and that he did not want the school's old name, Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School, to be a distraction.
The school has been renamed North Catholic High School.
On Saturday, the Washington DC-based Cardinal cancelled a speech he was scheduled to deliver today at the World Meeting of Families in the RDS.
Prior to his current role as Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Wuerl was bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006.
The grand jury report did not accuse him of personally sexually abusing children.
A two-year investigation into abuse in Pennsylvania found evidence that at least 1,000 people, mostly children, had been sexually abused by some 300 clergymen during the past 70 years.
The report said the numbers of actual victims and abusers could be much higher.
The report found that Cardinal Wuerl notified the Vatican in 1989 of several priests who had been accused of sexually abusing children but that over subsequent years he granted requests by some to be reassigned to other parishes or to retire early, and in one case approved a loan to assist one such priest with personal debts.
Last week's report was the most wide-ranging US investigation into sexual abuse by priests since the scandal burst into the public eye in Boston in 2002.
