As the US bishops prepare for their 13-14 November plenary meeting in Baltimore, the issue of clerical sex abuse continues to dominate media coverage, as the leadership of the Church struggles to get its house in order.
In New York, auxiliary Bishop John Jenik was removed from public ministry after a review board determined that an allegation that he had abused a minor was credible. Jenik, who had been a much-loved pastor of a poor parish in the Bronx, denied the allegation. He is the third bishop to be accused of abuse this year, joining the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the former bishop of Cheyenne, Wyoming, Joseph Hart.
Meanwhile, other bishops rushed to publish the names of credibly accused priests. Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans and Bishop George Murry, SJ, of Youngstown, Ohio, joined a dozen or so bishops who have published such lists this year.
Aymond listed 57 priests, out of 2,432, against whom allegations were credible following a search of all personnel files since 1950.
Bishop Murry listed 31 clergy and one religious brother since the diocese was founded in 1943. He said 551 secular clergy and 474 religious priests had served the diocese in that period.
Both dioceses reported a lower percentage of clergy, 2 per cent and 3 per cent respectively, than the national estimate of 4 per cent, determined by a John Jay University study.
The Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa, revealed that it had never disclosed the case of Fr Jerome Coyle who admitted to the abuse of some 50 boys in the 1980s. He was removed from ministry at the time but never laicised. The diocese never published his name.
The bishop at the time, Lawrence Soens, was also subsequently accused of sexual molestation. In 1998, he was succeeded by Bishop, now Cardinal, Daniel DiNardo who never disclosed Coyle’s name so that other victims might come forward, even during the 2002 sex abuse crisis.
In 2004, DiNardo was translated to Galveston-Houston as coadjutor bishop. He is now the president of the US bishops’ conference.
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