Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., said Tuesday he would soon travel to Rome to discuss his resignation with Pope Francis, laying the groundwork for the exit of one of the highest officials in the U.S. Catholic Church as it is engulfed by a growing sexual-abuse scandal. 
 
 The end of Cardinal Wuerl’s career as archbishop of Washington—one of the most influential positions in the U.S. church—would mark a new phase in this year’s crisis, with accountability moving toward those who covered up abuse, not... ||||| (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh said on Wednesday it had removed Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s name from a high school after a grand jury report on sex abuse in the Church found he had reassigned priests who had been accused of abusing children, rather than taking stronger action. 
 
 FILE PHOTO: Cardinal Donald William Wuerl attends before Pope Francis leads a consistory at the Vatican, February 12, 2015. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi/File Photo 
 
 Prior to his current role as archbishop of Washington, Wuerl was bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006. The grand jury report did not accuse him of personally sexually abusing children. 
 
 The Pittsburgh diocese said in a statement that following the release of the report, Wuerl asked last week for his name to be removed from Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School, saying he did not want to be a distraction. The school has been renamed North Catholic High School. 
 
 A two-year investigation into abuse in Pennsylvania found evidence that at least 1,000 people, mostly children, had been sexually abused by some 300 clergymen during the past 70 years. The report said the numbers of actual victims and abusers could be much higher. 
 
 The report found that Wuerl notified the Vatican in 1989 of several priests who had been accused of sexually abusing children but that over subsequent years he granted requests by some to be reassigned to other parishes or to retire early, and in one case approved a loan to assist one such priest with personal debts. 
 
 On Saturday, Wuerl canceled a planned speech at this week’s World Meeting of Families in Dublin, the second high-ranking U.S. Church official to do so. 
 
 Last week’s report was the most wide-ranging U.S. investigation into sexual abuse by priests since the scandal burst into the public eye in Boston in 2002. ||||| (CNN) Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the embattled archbishop of Washington, will travel to the Vatican "in the very near future" to ask Pope Francis to accept his resignation, a spokesman said. 
 
 In a letter to priests in the diocese, Wuerl said he will meet with Francis about the resignation he presented nearly three years ago at age 75, the mandatory age for Catholic bishops to submit their retirement to the Pope. He said a decision about his future "is an essential aspect so that this archdiocesan church we all love can move forward." 
 
 "Our discernment here, I believe, has indicated the way forward to bring healing and a new beginning at the service of this church," Wuerl said. 
 
 Ed McFadden, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Washington, said on Wednesday that Wuerl will ask Pope Francis to accept his resignation. McFadden said he did not know when the meeting would occur. A contingent of American bishops is meeting on Thursday with the Pope in Rome, but Wuerl is not among them, according to the Vatican. 
 
 At a recent meeting with the Pope in Vatican City, Wuerl said in his letter, the Pope asked him to consider the best course of action "as we face new revelations of the extent of the horror of the clergy abuse of children and the failures in episcopal oversight." 
 
 Read More ||||| Facing an uproar over revelations that he mismanaged past cases of clerical sexual abuse, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, sent a letter informing his priests on Tuesday that he plans to discuss his resignation with Pope Francis in Rome. 
 
 Cardinal Wuerl has faced calls for his resignation by some of his priests and parishioners since the release of a bombshell grand jury report last month in Pennsylvania. Cardinal Wuerl previously served as the archbishop of Pittsburgh, and the report included accounts of his allowing several priests accused of sexually abusing children to remain in ministry, after relying on the advice of psychologists who had assessed the priests. 
 
 The cardinal had gained the confidence of both Francis and his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who relied on the low-key bureaucrat to steer international gatherings of bishops at the Vatican. 
 
 But Cardinal Wuerl has been tarred by association with his predecessor in Washington, the former Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, who recently stepped down as a cardinal after accusations that decades ago, he molested an altar boy and coerced seminary students to sleep in his bed.
– Since last month's grand jury report describing how the former archbishop of Pittsburgh reassigned priests accused of abusing children, Cardinal Donald Wuerl has had his name scrubbed from a school, been the subject of protests by Catholic schoolteachers, and faced calls from priests and parishioners to resign. Resignation is now on the table, the 77-year-old archbishop of Washington wrote in a Tuesday letter to priests, laying out a plan to discuss the subject with Pope Francis in Rome. Wuerl submitted his resignation at age 75 as is required of Catholic bishops, but the pope kept him on as one of his top US advisers, per the New York Times and CNN. During a meeting two weeks ago, the pope told Wuerl to consult with priests about the best way forward, reports the Wall Street Journal. Amid questions over whether he knew about molestation claims against his predecessor, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, he heard calls for him both to stay and resign. That showed the need for "some decision, sooner rather than later, on my part," Wuerl writes. Noting abuse survivors "have personally suffered so much," his letter adds non-victims "have also been wounded by the shame of these terrible actions and have questions about their bishop's ability to provide the necessary leadership." The letter doesn't say whether Wuerl will ask the pope to accept his resignation, however. (Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican's former ambassador to the US, said Wuerl was complicit in a coverup.)