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Published: September 2, 2008

“I just don't have the energy"

Sacramento bishop asks pope to let him retire

Sacramento Bishop William K. Weigand, in failing health for many years, has asked Pope Benedict XVI for permission to retire, effective Nov. 30.

Bishop Weigand, 71, is seeking retirement four years earlier than the normal mandatory retirement age of 75. During the entire time he has served as a bishop, Weigand “has endured ill health, having been diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis,” says the diocesan web site’s episcopal biography. “In April 2005, he underwent a living donor liver transplant, returning to work full time by November of 2005.”

“I'm just kind of worn out," Bishop Weigand told the Sacramento Bee. "I haven't run out of ideas. I just don't have the energy."

Pope John Paul II appointed Bishop Weigand to his current post in 1994, following 13 years as Bishop of Salt Lake City, Utah. He arrived in Sacramento in January 1994.

In 2004, Bishop Weigand publicly upbraided then-Gov. Gray Davis, telling the governor to "have the integrity" to stop receiving Communion because of his pro-abortion politics.

A year later, the bishop ordered the firing of Marie Bain, a drama teacher at Loretto High School, an all-girls Catholic prep school. Bishop Weigand took the action after a parent sent him a photograph of Bain escorting women at a Planned Parenthood clinic. In a letter to Loretto High School officials, the bishop wrote: “I am directing you, under the provisions of Code of Canon Law… to dismiss Ms. Bain with all deliberate speed."

School officials apparently balked at taking any action against Bain, but the bishop’s dismissal order made clear the reason for the firing: “Public participation in the procurement of abortions is morally inappropriate and unacceptable.” Weigand expanded his observations in an Oct. 26, 2005 letter to the faithful: "If we are to form faithful Catholic young people and provide suitable role models for such formation, teachers in our Catholic schools must themselves be witnesses to the Truth proclaimed in the Gospel, conducting themselves by word and deed in accordance with the Truths of our Faith. Their witness does not end when the school bell rings at the end of the day or the school year concludes at the beginning of summer."

In June 2005, the diocese agreed to pay $35 million to settle 33 claims of sexual abuse by priests. The bishop told the Bee that the diocese is beginning to recover from the expense, but the “hurt and pain” remain.

"He [Bishop Weigand] took us through the most serious crisis in the history of the American Catholic Church – the sexual abuse crisis – and we have come through it better than most," the Rev. James Murphy of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament told the Bee. "Many of the changes he made will last well beyond his lifetime because they were institutional."

Weigand is scheduled to turn over the diocese to current coadjutor Bishop Jaime Soto at a Nov. 30 Mass in Sacramento’s more than 100-year-old Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, which underwent a $34 million renovation under Weigand’s leadership. As part of the ritual, Weigand will retire his coat of arms with the phrase "Feed My Lambs," which will be replaced by Bishop Soto’s coat of arms bearing the phrase “Joy and Hope.”

Weigand told the Bee he plans to spend the first six months of retirement camping out in a new trailer, writing and working on his family’s genealogy.

Bishop Soto, 51, was named coadjutor bishop in October 2007. He will become the highest-ranking Hispanic bishop in the western United States when he takes command in Sacramento. Prior being named to the Sacramento post, Soto served as Auxiliary Bishop of Orange County.

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