The US Catholic Church, already reeling from manifold allegations of failure to deal with clerical sex abuse, suffered a further savage blow on Wednesday (20 December) when the Illinois state attorney general, Lisa Madigan, said her office had identified child sexual abuse accusations against at least 500 Catholic priests or clergy members not publicly named by the church, and that many of those cases were not properly investigated.
In a blistering preliminary report on the investigation she opened in August into the state’s six Catholic dioceses, Madigan said the 500 priests and clergy members her office had identified were in addition to 185 publicly named by the six dioceses.
“By choosing not to thoroughly investigate allegations, the Catholic Church has failed in its moral obligation to provide survivors, parishioners and the public a complete and accurate accounting of all sexually inappropriate behaviour involving priests in Illinois,” Madigan said in a statement. “The failure to investigate also means that the Catholic Church has never made an effort to determine whether the conduct of the accused priests was ignored or covered up by superiors.”
In a statement issued just after the report was released, Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich expressed “profound regret of the whole church for our failures to address the scourge of clerical sexual abuse”, adding, “It is the courage of victim-survivors that has shed purifying light on this dark chapter in church history.”
“The preliminary stages of this investigation have already demonstrated that the Catholic Church cannot police itself,” Madigan said. “Allegations of sexual abuse of minors, even if they stem from conduct that occurred many years ago, cannot be treated as internal personnel matters.
“The investigation has revealed that allegations frequently have not been adequately investigated by the dioceses or not investigated at all.”
“In many cases,” Madigan said, the church failed to notify law enforcement authorities or Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) of allegations of child sexual abuse.”
In a particularly damning claim, she said: “The dioceses also often found reasons to discredit survivors' stories of abuse by focusing on the survivors’ personal lives,”
Cardinal Cupich said that since 2002, the archdiocese has reported all allegations, regardless of whether the accused is living or dead, to civil authorities.
The attorney general's inquiry began after a Pennsylvania grand jury report revealed 70 years of abuse allegations in six of the state’s Catholic dioceses, starting in 1947. The report detailed allegations of abuse by 300 clergy and other church workers and involving 1,000 minors. It also claimed a church cover-up of abuse in some instances.
A 19 December statement from the Chicago Archdiocese said the archdiocese has reviewed the preliminary report of the Illinois attorney general's investigation and said the “nature of the report makes it difficult to discern which generalised findings apply to the Archdiocese of Chicago”.
“First and most important, we recognise and mourn the grave damage done to the many people harmed by clergy sexual abuse. We will always need to own and express deep regret for the suffering caused both by the abuse and the past failures to respond,” the statement said
It also noted that since 1991 the archdiocese has “maintained one of the first and largest victim-assistance programmes in the nation. The assistance ministry and the help it offers is independent of the investigative process. We provide this assistance to anyone making an allegation regardless of when the abuse is alleged to have occurred, whether the accused is living or whether the allegation is eventually substantiated. To date, we have provided assistance to more than 400 victim-survivors and their families.”
It also urged anyone “who has been abused by a member of clergy or employee of the archdiocese to come forward to receive the help and healing they deserve”.
Cardinal Cupich is one of the organisers of the 21-24 February meeting of the world’s bishops’ conferences called by Pope Francis to address sexual abuse in the Church.
“Absent of a comprehensive and communal response, not only will we fail to bring healing to victim survivors, but the very credibility of the Church to carry on the mission of Christ will be in jeopardy throughout the world,” the organisers wrote in a letter sent to the 180 participants taking part in the 21-24 February meeting, most of whom are leaders of local episcopal conferences. “The first step must be acknowledging the truth of what has happened. For this reason, we urge each episcopal conference president to reach out and visit with victim survivors of clergy sex abuse in your respective countries prior to the meeting in Rome, to learn first-hand the suffering that they have endured.”
As well as Cardinal Cupich the organisers of the summit include the Cardinal Archbishop of Bombay, Oswald Gracias, the Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna and Jesuit priest Fr Hans Zollner.
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