c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Three years ago, when Bishop Wilton Gregory was named president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the big news was that he was the first African-American to hold the post.

But within six weeks, as the clergy sex abuse scandal erupted in Boston and spread nationwide, all that was set aside as Gregory became the public face of a bruised and battered church. It was a moment, Gregory said, that would make Martin Luther King Jr. proud.

“One of the graces of the moment was that all of a sudden I was being judged, as Dr. King liked to say, by the content of my character and not the color of my skin,” said Gregory, the bishop of Belleville, Ill. “What a great day.”

Next week, Gregory will end his term as president and return to the workaday routines of his heartland diocese. Like the rest of the American church, he is anxious to move beyond the scandal. Church watchers say his widely acclaimed role in steering the church may not leave him in Belleville for long.

Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., who has served as Gregory’s soft-spoken vice president for three years, is expected to be elected president when the bishops gather in Washington Nov. 15-18.

As president, Gregory oversaw the church’s abuse reforms and pushed hard for a “zero tolerance” response, as well as the creation of an independent-minded lay review board that sometimes clashed with the bishops.

With no manual on how to handle the scandal, Gregory relied on political and media savvy _ and a calm, pastoral presence _ to steer the church toward recovery. It was a performance that won him near-universal praise from the rest of the church.

“He was the right man for the right job at the right moment,” said Archbishop Harry Flynn of St. Paul-Minneapolis, chairman of the bishops’ ad hoc committee on sexual abuse.

Throughout the scandal, Gregory, 56, said he relied on prayer and frequent trips to the confessional to sustain him. At many points, he wished he could talk with his mentor, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago. Presiding at Mass, Gregory said he realized how “vulnerable” he was before God.

“I’m no great hero, but the last thing the Catholic Church needed was for its leader to collapse on the road,” he said in an interview. “I’m grateful to Almighty God that I survived.”

Despite the stresses of the job, Gregory said he would still do the job all over again because he feels that’s where God wanted him. “Would I have played the game? Without a doubt.”

The presidency of the bishops’ conference carries no real authority, and many describe it as a thankless administrative job. Yet Gregory transformed the role into a national bully pulpit, prodding the bishops toward reforms and exposing the church’s wounds to the world.

“We are the ones, whether through ignorance or lack of vigilance, or _ God forbid _ with knowledge, who allowed priest abusers to remain in ministry and reassigned them to communities where they continued to abuse,” Gregory said during the bishops’ climactic meeting in June 2002, where he asked for “forgiveness” from victims.

Gregory said the “zero tolerance” policy that removes abusive priests after one infraction is still the best policy, despite protests from some bishops and priests’ groups. On balance, victims groups describe Gregory as fair, but say he failed to follow through on promises to keep victims involved in reforms.

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Gregory should have pushed harder for negligent bishops to be disciplined. “He helped choose a bureaucratic and public-relations response rather than a genuine healing and prevention response,” Clohessy said.

Gregory also took heat from some bishops for choosing former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating as the review board’s first chair. Keating resigned last year under pressure after comparing stall tactics by some bishops to members of the mafia. And not every bishop appreciated the board’s candor.

“They appear to be expanding their competence, responsibilities, activities and studies in a dynamic of authority,” Archbishop Henry Mansell of Hartford, Conn., warned Gregory in a letter last February.

Either way, Gregory’s tenure as president could set the stage for a promotion to a larger diocese and, some say, possibly a cardinal’s red hat. Serving as president is not an automatic meal ticket to a larger job, however. Many note that Gregory was passed over for archbishop of Boston last year.

“Nobody became cardinal because he was president of the bishops’ conference,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America. “The track record would say that Gregory is going to stay in Belleville.”

For his part, Gregory dismisses such talk as frivolous speculation. Others, however, see bigger things for Gregory, with eventual openings in Cincinnati New Orleans, Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington and the granddaddy of them all, New York.

David Gibson, author of “The Coming Catholic Church,” said Gregory has made friends and enemies in the past three years, but Gregory’s future _ the “$64,000 question” _ may hinge on the success of the reforms he pushed so hard to adopt.

“It doesn’t matter so much what the (American) bishops think. That decision is ultimately in Rome,” Gibson said. “If someone in the Vatican feels kindly disposed toward Gregory, he’ll be a cardinal sooner rather than later.”

MO/JL END ECKSTROM