Early life and education

Donald Wuerl was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the second of four children of Francis and Mary Anna (née Schiffauer) Wuerl.^[1] He has two brothers, Wayne and Dennis, and a sister, Carol.^[2] His father worked nights weighing freight cars for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and served in the Navy during World War II.^[2] His mother died in 1944, and his father married Kathryn Cavanaugh in 1946.^[2]
Wuerl received his early education at the parochial school of St. Mary of the Mount Church in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh, graduating in 1958.^[3] He then attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he was a Basselin Scholar at Theological College,^[4] earning a bachelor's degree (1962) and master's degree (1963) in philosophy.^[5]
He continued his studies at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.^[1] He earned a master's degree in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1967. After ordination, Wuerl was sent to Rome for further theological study. He is an alumnus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Angelicum where he obtained a doctorate in theology in 1974.

Early career

He was ordained a priest on December 17, 1966.^[6] His first assignment was as assistant pastor at St. Rosalia parish in Pittsburgh's Greenfield neighborhood and as secretary to Pittsburgh's Bishop John Wright. After Wright was elevated to cardinal in 1969, Wuerl was his full-time secretary in Vatican City from 1969 until Wright's death in 1979. Because Cardinal Wright was recovering from surgery and confined to a wheelchair, Wuerl, as Wright's secretary, was one of three non-cardinals permitted inside the conclave that selected Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II in 1978.^[7][8][9]
In 1976, he co-authored a catechism for adults, The Teaching of Christ, which has since appeared in several editions and been widely translated.
Wuerl was rector at St. Paul Seminary in Pittsburgh from 1981 to 1985. In 1982, he was made executive secretary to Bishop John Marshall of Burlington, Vermont, who was leading a Vatican-mandated study of U.S. seminaries.^[10][11]