Rembert Weakland

Following graduation in 1945, Weakland entered the novitiate of the archabbey, taking the religious name of Rembert. When he completed this initiation into monastic life the following year, he went on to study at Saint Vincent College and Saint Vincent Seminary, also run by the archabbey. He made his solemn profession as a monk on September 29, 1949, at Solesmes Abbey in France. He was then sent by the archabbot to study theology at the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm in Rome.[2]

On June 24, 1951, Weakland was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Simone Salvi, O.S.B., Abbot of Subiaco Abbey in Italy.[3] He furthered his studies in music in Italy, France, and Germany, as well as at both the Juilliard School and Columbia University in New York City. During this period, while doing research at the British Library, he discovered the text of a medieval liturgical drama, the Play of Daniel, for which he released an authoritative text with commentary. It came to be frequently staged by musical groups, such as the New York Pro Musica, which specialize in music from that era. From 1957 to 1963, he taught music at his alma mater of St. Vincent College.[2]

Weakland was elected Coadjutor Archabbot of St. Vincent Archabbey on June 26, 1963. He soon succeeded to the office and received the solemn blessing of an archabbot from the local bishop, William G. Connare of the Diocese of Greensburg, on August 29, 1963. Following this, he became the Chancellor and Chairman of the Board of Directors of St. Vincent College. On May 8, 1964, he received a papal appointment as Consultor to the Commission for Implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council and was appointed a member of that commission in 1968.

On September 29, 1967, Weakland was elected the Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Confederation, to which office he was later re-elected in 1973. During this period, he served as Chancellor ex officio of the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm. He also served as a member of the Vatican Council of Superiors General from 1968 until 1977. In 1968, Weakland presided over an international, inter-religious monastic conference near Bangkok, Thailand, at which the American Trappist monk and writer, Thomas Merton, died. Weakland administered the Last Rites of the Catholic Church to Merton and arranged for the body to be flown back on a U.S. military airplane to the United States.[4]

On September 20, 1977, Pope Paul VI appointed Weakland the Archbishop of Milwaukee. He was consecrated on November 8, in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist by Archbishop Jean Jadot, the Apostolic Delegate to the United States.[2] One of his first actions was to sell the four bedroom suburban home where his predecessor had lived and move to the cathedral rectory.[5]

On December 21, 1999, Weakland defended and received a Doctorate in Musicology – "with distinction" – from Columbia University, New York, for his research and thesis on "The Office Antiphons of the Ambrosian Chant".[6] Weakland retired as archbishop in 2002. In July 2009, he published his memoirs under the title of A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop dealing with the issues of ongoing Church reform.

In 1984, Weakland responded to teachers in a Catholic school who were reporting sexual abuse by local priests by stating "any libelous material found in your letter will be scrutinized carefully by our lawyers." The Wisconsin Court of Appeals rebuked him for this, calling his remarks "abrupt" and "insensitive".[7] In 1994, Weakland said those reporting sexual abuse were "squealing". He later apologized for the remarks.[7]

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a deposition released in 2009 revealed that Weakland shredded reports about sexual abuse by priests.[8] Weakland admitted allowing priests guilty of child sex abuse to continue as priests without warning parishioners or alerting the police.[9] Weakland stated in his autobiography that in the early years of the sexual abuse scandal he did not understand that child sexual abuse was a crime.[10]

In 1965–66, Weakland served as President of the Church Music Association of America. According to an account by Richard Schuler,[11] a split emerged very quickly, with Weakland taking sharp exception to the "reactionary attitudes in liturgical thinking" that he said were present at the Consociato meeting. In interviews with the press, he expressed regret that the meeting failed to include modern music and dancing in its liturgical agenda. His views did not prevail within the CMAA, and so his presidency did not last.[12]

In 2000, Weakland was a critic of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's document Dominus Iesus on religious relativism.[13] One of his last major actions as archbishop was effecting a controversial renovation of the historic Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee.

Weakland retired on May 24, 2002, at the mandatory retirement age of 75. His retirement was overshadowed by revelations that he paid $450,000 of diocesan funds to prevent a lawsuit.[14][15][16] Weakland stepped down soon after it was revealed that the diocese had paid $450,000 to Paul Marcoux, a former Marquette University theology student, to settle a claim he made against the archbishop more than two decades earlier stemming from a long-term relationship with Weakland. Weakland admitted to the affair and apologized after the story broke.[1] He came out as gay in 2009, disclosing his sexuality in his memoir A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop.[17]

Since his retirement, Weakland has twice been invited to move to Benedictine abbeys in the United States, but both invitations were eventually rescinded.[1]

In March 2019, it was announced that Weakland, along with former archbishop William Cousins, would have his name removed from buildings in the archdiocese in response to his poor handling of sex abuse cases.[18] The Weakland Center, which houses parish offices and outreach initiatives, was renamed on March 22, 2019.[19]