Bishop Gregory: powerful black bishop helps catholic church confront sexual abuse problems and a new world - Wilton D. Gregory president of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

DESTINY -- a man and his moment--met in Dallas and the results are still reverberating in cities around the world.

When the Most Rev. Wilton D. Gregory, who is one of the most powerful bishops in the Catholic Church, took the helm of the nation's Catholic bishops at their historic spring meeting in Dallas, he faced the awesome task of addressing an international crisis that threatened the future of the church.

After 11 hours of often-intense debate over a two-day period, the bishops adopted a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which Bishop Gregory co-authored.

"I think that the focus of Dallas was what the bishops wanted to say to parents, what we had to say to parents," he says. "That is we will never knowingly put your children at risk ... We had to say that any minister who has harmed a child will never be put in a position to harm a child again. There are no negotiations with that promise we had to make to parents."

Some critics of the Dallas charter charge that its "zero tolerance" policy is too harsh on priests and contradicts the church's mandate to forgive. Others say that it does not go far enough in addressing the culpability of some bishops and their accountability in the scandal.

Gregory is clear on both points. "Forgiveness does not have anything to do with reinstatement, but there has been an equation in the minds of many people that it's really not mercy unless priests are reinstated," he says. "There is nothing any of us can do that overpowers God's ability to forgive," he adds. And the church does forgive, he says, "however, actions have a consequence and the consequence is the loss of public ministerial office."

As for the discipline of bishops, Gregory says that because of the nature of the Catholic Church, the assignment, retirement and transfer of bishops belong exclusively to the pope. "Now for some people greater accountability means that if you can't fire 'em you really have no authority, but we as bishops are responsible and should be responsible to each other and should have the obligation to call each other to greater integrity and to greater commitment to the office that we exercise."

By most accounts it was Bishop Gregory's compassionate and skillful leadership that helped the Church navigate one of the most serious crises of its history. Throughout the crisis and later, at a historic meeting at the Vatican, Gregory was at the center of the church hierarchy and it was this convert to Catholicism who held the international spotlight at the final Vatican press conference. Liz Quirin, editor of the Belleville diocesan newspaper, the Messenger, who was with Gregory in Dallas, says, "He was the right man in the right place. No one could have done better. There were 300 bishops and 700 credentialed media and at least that many more outside trying to get in." And in the middle of this international maelstrom was a man who as a boy would probably have had to use the back door of the meeting he was chairing.

That irony is not lost on Gregory, who acknowledges that when he was first elected last November as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops the main issue was his race--he is the first African American to hold the position.

"In mid-November 2001, I thought that the most significant questions that I would have to face would be in relation to being the first African-American president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops. Those questions got a lot of attention those first six weeks and then they ceased."

What pushed racial considerations aside was the issue of sexual abuse of children by priests. His first year in office has been spent at the center of this crisis, a crisis he says won't be resolved in his three-year term. "I'm not going to be able to conclude this in the three years that are allocated to me as president, but I hope to have a solid beginning. Because, in the end, it is the Lord Jesus who reconciles the church through His Holy Spirit."

He says crisis is the "wedding of difficulty with opportunity" and that he hopes to focus more on the various opportunities for unity that may come out of this crisis. "This is an opportunity for bishops and laity to work more effectively together; an opportunity for greater transparency in areas that need greater transparency; an opportunity for the Catholic Church to review and to recommit itself to the call for holiness," he says.

His own call and his journey to Dallas began on the South Side of Chicago at St. Carthage parish where he was introduced to Catholicism. He was not a "cradle Catholic" but a convert to the faith. Born Dec. 7, 1947, he joined the church in the sixth-grade after entering St. Carthage elementary school and decided to become a priest six weeks later. "I entered St. Carthage in 1958, and the 1950s were a time of rapid racial change in Chicago." His grandmother, Etta Mae Duncan, and his mother, Ethel Duncan Gregory, were convinced that "an education was ultimately the tool that you needed."