(Photo by Saint Joseph)

More than a week out from the Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed the abuse of more than 1,000 children by more than 300 Catholic clergy members in Pennsylvania, the pressure on D.C. archbishop Cardinal Donald Wuerl to resign is increasing.

More than 52,000 people have now signed a Change.org petition calling on the cardinal to resign, and advocacy organizations are also raising their voices. On Tuesday morning, leaders from the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests held a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol calling for Wuerl’s resignation, also demanding that he post the names of Washington-area clerics who have been accused of sexual abuse.

Wuerl is mentioned by name in the report around 200 times (all dating back to his time as the bishop of Pittsburgh), and his record of protecting children from sexual abusers in the church is mixed: the report sometimes describes him taking active measures to protect children and avoid reinstating known abusers, but other times, he reassigned alleged abusers to different parishes, what appears to have been common practice for leaders in the Catholic Church when such allegations would come to light.

Becky Ianni, the Washington-area chapter leader for SNAP, herself a survivor of clergy abuse in Arlington when she was a child, says the report has been traumatic for many survivors in the area.

“Our helpline has been inundated with calls,” she says. “Some survivors have seen their names listed in the grand jury report, and the names of their perpetrators, but the majority…are just triggered by it and want to reach out and talk to somebody.”

Ianni says she does not think that Wuerl’s responses to the grand jury report have been adequate. Shortly after the report came out, Wuerl told FOX 5 that he “tried to do his very best” dealing with the allegations, and that “when an allegation comes forward that allegation often times ends up being one word against another.”

He has also declined to step down as archbishop, and the Archdiocese of Washington has stood behind him since the news broke. Initially, it put up a website, thewuerlrecord.com, defending Wuerl’s actions, but that has since been taken down.

“While I understand this [grand jury] Report may be critical of some of my actions, I believe the Report confirms that I acted with diligence, with concern for the victims and to prevent future acts of abuse,” Wuerl said in a release on the Archdiocese’s website.

But the backlash—inside Washington and out of it—has continued to pile up. A Catholic publisher this week chose to “indefinitely” postpone the publication of Wuerl’s book, some area Catholic leaders have publicly suggested he should step down, and a Pennsylvania Catholic high school will remove him from its name, reportedly at his own request, after the sign outside the school was vandalized with red paint.

There are also new questions about another recent sex abuse scandal involving a prominent D.C. Catholic leader. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who previously served as the archbishop of Washington, was accused of abusing a child and seminary students; he was suspended last month. A New York City priest alleged this week that he repeatedly alerted Church officials to McCarrick’s inappropriate behavior and was ignored.

A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Washington has not returned a request for comment.

Even some Catholic leaders sympathetic to Wuerl think he should step down.

“I feel very badly for Cardinal Wuerl,” Pat McGuire, the president of Trinity Washington University, told WAMU. “He’s been very good to me and to Trinity and I think he’s been a very good bishop for the Archdiocese of Washington. Having said that, I am a student of leadership, and I know there are times when the leader must really make the right kind of statement about accountability, atonement, forgiveness and I think we may be at that point in time.”

McGuire also said that Wuerl “probably, at some point” should step aside.