People use the word shocked for things that are actually not that shocking. This is not one of those instances.

A scandal has been brewing in the Diocese of Richmond over Catholic Charities Richmond assisting an underage woman to procure an abortion going so far as to sign the consent forms for the death. We have held off on calling for the action against the Bishop (naively it turns out) because we did not understand the level of his culpability. While a Bishop certainly sets the tone for the diocese (Can you imagine something like this happening under Bishop Bruskewitz in Nebraska?), we had hoped that this happened because the Bishop is just an extraordinarily bad administrator who had no idea what is going on under his nose. Those hopes have now been dashed. The Bishop knew in advance of the plan, and did NOTHING.

[Washington Times] The Roman Catholic bishop of Richmond was told that a diocesan charity planned to help a teenage foster child get an abortion in January and did not try to prevent the procedure.

Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo “was told erroneously that everything was in place and there was nothing he could do to stop it,” said Steve Neill, Bishop DiLorenzo’s communications officer. “He is very apologetic about the whole episode.

“It is very awkward, it is very embarrassing. A human life was taken. He certainly has not taken it lightly in any way. He is clearly opposed to abortion.”
…
Bill Etherington, an attorney for the diocese and CCR, said Bishop DiLorenzo was given bad information about whether the abortion could be prevented, but didn’t elaborate as to how.

“He was told it could not be stopped,” Mr. Etherington said. “It was erroneous information. He didn’t have to sign off on it. He was not personally involved.”

He added, without elaborating, that the underage abortion did not violate state law.

Embarrassing? Did not violate state law? Erroneous information? Did everything he could do?

This is murder we are talking about! The monstrosity of this scandal is beyond words. The attitude of the Bishop and his lawyers only serve to compound the scandal.

For the good of all the faithful in Richmond and the Church as a whole, Bishop DiLorenzo should resign. Immediately.