After serving as a priest and then as an auxiliary bishop in his native Chicago, then-Bishop Wilton Gregory was installed as the seventh bishop of the Diocese of Belleville, Illinois, in February 1994 and served there for the next 11 years until being named the archbishop of Atlanta. Bishop Gregory, who grew up in the South Side of Chicago, led a rural diocese in Belleville. “I have come to appreciate the wisdom of farm families,” he said.
As Belleville’s bishop, he faced the task of helping that faith community rebuild churches and facilities after a devastating 1993 flood of the Mississippi River. He also faced the impact of the effects of the clergy abuse crisis in Belleville, where between March 1993 and February 1994, nine priests and one deacon in the diocese had been removed from ministry.
In confronting the clergy abuse crisis in Belleville, Bishop Gregory emphasized healing and transparency, qualities that he demonstrated when he served as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2001 to 2004. During his tenure in office, the crisis of sex abuse by Catholic clergy escalated in the United States, and under his leadership, the bishops in 2002 adopted and implemented the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which included a zero tolerance policy on priests who abuse children. After then-Archbishop Gregory was installed as the new archbishop of Washington in 2019, that summer the Archdiocese of Washington revised its Child Protection Policy to become the archdiocese’s Child Protection and Safe Environment Policy, to emphasize the importance of ensuring safe environments for people of all ages, protecting children from sexual abuse and adults from sexual harassment or abuses of power.
