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Fr. Thomas Rosica.Salt and Light / Youtube

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October 12, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Vatican advisor and pro-LGBT priest Fr. Thomas Rosica tweeted his praise for Cardinal Wuerl after news broke today that Pope Francis accepted the Cardinal’s resignation. 

“Give thanks to God that men like + Donald Wuerl entered our lives, touched us, encouraged us, taught us & left us a powerful example of leadership, humility and service to the Lord and the Church,” the Basilian priest wrote on Twitter.

“Thank you @Cardinal_Wuerl for your leadership, your example, your courage, your honesty & witness & your humility.  You have been and remain a great teacher.”

Wuerl’s resignation comes in the wake of a barrage of allegations that he mishandled and covered up instances of criminal sexual abuse by priests while he was bishop of Pittsburgh, from 1988-2006. In a sweeping grand jury report on criminal sexual abuse released on August 14, Wuerl was mentioned some 200 times.

Wuerl was also accused in August by former apostolic nuncio to the United States Archbishop Carlo Viganò of lying “shamelessly” in stating that he did not know about now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick's abuse of seminarians. 

Rosica tweeted that Wuerl had been “hounded from office.” 

The Salt and Light Media founder is known for his pro-homosexual views. Rosica has defended LGBT activist Fr. James Martin, rejected the Catechism’s description of the homosexual inclination as “objectively disordered,” and said the phrase “intrinsically disordered” is “harsh.” Rosica was a longtime admirer of the late Gregory Baum, a homosexual dissident former priest whom he interviewed on Salt and Light in 2012.

More recently, Rosica was scheduled to say Mass for the pro-LGBT All Inclusive Ministries in Toronto but cancelled after news of the event was widely published. Rosica has preached a “mission” at the LGBT-friendly parish Most Holy Redeemer in San Francisco.

Popular English Catholic blogger Deacon Nick Donnelly replied to Rosica’s tweet, stating that the priest “ignores the fact that @Cardinal_Wuerl is implicated in the cover up of priests raping children.”

“His paean on Wuerl is similar to his over the top praise of the notorious homosexual priest & heretic Gregory Baum,” continued Donnelly. 

Regarding the Pope’s praise of Wuerl, Donnelly tweeted:

@Cardinal_Wuerl is mentioned over 160 times in Pennsylvania Grand Jury into the rape of children by priests & its cover up by bishops. These 160 mentions were not commendations for his example in exposing the rape of children by priests. How is Wuerl a model bishop @Pontifex ?”

Damian Thompson, the editor-in-chief of the UK’s Catholic Herald, found Pope Francis’ letter to Wuerl “extraordinary” and “tone deaf.”

“Pope Francis’ letter to Wuerl is extraordinary,” he tweeted. “He had better hope that Wuerl’s handling of sex abuses stands up to close scrutiny.”

He then remarked, “‘Tone-deaf’ is a charitable description of Francis’s letter to Wuerl. It’s not going down well at all.” 

“It really is hard to imagine how the Pope and Team Francis could be handling the sex abuse crisis any worse,” Thompson added.

Popular English blogger-priest Father Ray Blake tweeted in response to that remark, “There is so much sycophancy around the Pontiff that no-one can be objective in their advice.”

Reporter George Neumayr of the American Spectator encouraged his Twitter followers to read Pope Francis’ letter:

“Be sure to read the pope's sham letter to Wuerl that accompanies the announcement of his accepted resignation,” he wrote. “The pope calls Wuerl's practice of returning molesters to ministry mere ‘mistakes.’ Losing your car keys is a mistake; exposing children to an abuser is a crime.”

Neumayr also said that the Pope’s decision to ask Wuerl to say in Washington as the Apostolic Administrator was “corrupt”. 

“I hear that the DC attorney general is moving, albeit embarrassingly slowly, toward an investigation of the McCarrick-Wuerl regime,” he tweeted. “The pope's corrupt decision to let Wuerl remain as apostolic administrator until his replacement arrives should spur the investigation even more. 

Austen Ruse, president of the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), after reading the news on NCR’s Edward Pentin’s Twitter account, tweeted, “I am now terrified.” 

EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo saw in the Pope’s letter a possible reference to Vatican whistleblower Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. 

“In Pope's letter to Wuerl there is perhaps a sly swipe at +Vigano:,” he tweeted, “make the unity and mission of the Church grow above every kind of sterile division sown by the father of lies who, trying to hurt the shepherd, wants nothing more than that the sheep be dispersed (cf. Mt 26:31).”

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