Early Life and Education
Donald Wuerl was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the second of four children of Francis and Mary Anna (née Schiffauer) Wuerl. He has two brothers, Wayne and Dennis, and a sister, Carol. His father worked nights weighing freight cars for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and served in the Navy during World War II. His mother died in 1944, and his father married Kathryn Cavanaugh in 1946.
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. He then attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he was a Basselin Scholar at Theological College. He there earned a Bachelor's degree (1962) and Master's degree (1963) in philosophy.
He continued his studies at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. He earned a master's degree in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1967. After ordination, he studied at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, obtaining his doctorate in theology in 1974.
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