The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby attends the Church of England General Synod meeting in London, Britain, February 9, 2023.
by Estelle Shirbon in London and George Obulutsa in Nairobi
The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged the Anglican Church of Uganda to reject the country’s new anti-LGBT law, saying there is no justification for Anglicans anywhere to support legislation that goes against the Christian teachings of the Gospel.
Under the law, approved by President Yoweri Museveni in May, gay sex is punishable by life in prison while “aggravated homosexuality”, including transmitting HIV, attracts the death penalty.
Justin Welby, leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said he had written to Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba, the Primate of Uganda, to express “grief and dismay” at the church’s stance.
“There is no justification for any province of the Anglican Communion to support such laws: not in our resolutions, not in our teachings, and not in the Gospel we share,” Welby said in a statement on Friday.
Kaziimba said in May he was grateful for the new law. He said homosexuality was being forced on Uganda by “foreign actors … who disguise themselves as human rights activists” and went against Ugandans’ religious and cultural beliefs.
The Church of Uganda says 36% of Uganda’s population of around 45 million are Anglicans.
The Anglican Communion, which numbers tens of millions of people across 165 countries, is deeply divided over the ordination of gay clergy by some churches in some Western countries, and attitudes towards same-sex marriage.
The Ugandan church has been at the forefront of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), a conservative group. In April, GAFCON said it no longer had confidence in Welby because of his comments in support of the blessing of same-sex unions in churches.
Welby said in Friday’s statement he was deeply aware of the history of colonial rule in Uganda but “this is not about imposing Western values on our Ugandan Anglican sisters and brothers”.
“It is about reminding them of the commitments we have made as Anglicans to treat every person with the care and respect they deserve as children of God,” he said.
— “I think that they should be” posting lists of abusive members “because it’s been actually asked of us by the larger church,” the Rev. Gregory Polan told the Sun-Times.
The Rev. Gregory Polan, abbot primate of the Benedictine confederation, based in Rome.
The Benedictine monastery that founded Benet Academy in Lisle and the one that runs Marmion Academy in Aurora should publish complete lists of their clerics who have been deemed to have been credibly accused of child sex offenses, the top official of the Catholic religious order worldwide is urging.
“I would certainly encourage they be honest about those types of things,” the Rev. Gregory Polan, leader of the confederation of Benedictine groups around the world, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“I think that they should be” posting such lists of abusive members “because it’s been actually asked of us by the larger church,” Polan said in an interview from Rome, where he is based. “I think we need to do what the larger church is asking of us.”
Pope Francis met last summer at the Vatican with leaders of several Catholic orders. Speaking about child sex abuse by clergy, the worldwide leader of the Catholic church told them, “Please do not hide this reality.”
The pope’s main representative in the Chicago area, Cardinal Blase Cupich, has called on orders that operate in his geographic territory of Cook and Lake counties to make public the names of predatory clergy. That’s even though Cupich has delayed for years releasing the names of predator priests he’s been made aware of.
And the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, a consortium of male religious orders in the United States, has recommended that its member groups post public lists of their child-molesting clergy and brothers.
Despite those calls, the Benedictine monastery that founded Benet Academy maintains no publicly available list of members who have been credibly accused of child sex offenses.
The Benedictine monastery that runs Marmion recently published such a list, but it appears to exclude some names.
The Catholic priests who run both places — the Rev. John Brahill at Marmion and the Rev. Austin Murphy of Lisle’s St. Procopius Abbey — have declined Sun-Times interview requests or to answer questions regarding predatory clergy.
Marmion is in the Diocese of Rockford. Benet is in the Diocese of Joliet.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul called last month for greater openness regarding abusive clergy members by Catholic dioceses, which, like the Archdiocese of Chicago, cover a certain geographic territory and are headed by a bishop, and orders, which largely are independently run and, in the Chicago area, oversee or operate Catholic high schools in the city and suburbs.
Raoul’s call came as he released a report documenting that the Catholic church hierarchy in Illinois has vastly underreported child-molesting clerics for decades.
St. Procopius updated its website last year to say names of members who are accused of sexual abuses would be posted after the accusations have been substantiated.
But so far no such listing has been posted. And it appears that St. Procopius leaders will not make public any information involving old accusations, only those involving new cases of abuse.
Murphy has declined to discuss whether accusations about his abbey’s now-closed St. Joseph Bohemian Orphanage in Lisle, which was the subject of a 2011 federal lawsuit over abuse, have been deemed by the order to be credible. That lawsuit was dismissed on appeal in 2014.
Nor will Murphy discuss whether accusations in lawsuits against the Rev. Terence Fitzmaurice are credible. Fitzmaurice, a Benedictine who served at St. Procopius Church in Pilsen for years and died in 2009, was accused of child sex abuse in lawsuits settled by church officials.
Polan — who was born in Berwyn, grew up in Riverside and attended Quigley South preparatory seminary on the South Side — said that, although he is the leader of Benedictines worldwide, he doesn’t have the authority to force abbeys to release names and other information about predatory clergy.
Polan is elected abbot primate by the leaders of Benedictine congregations around the world, whose monasteries operate semi-autonomously.
“I do function over the abbot presiding, but they’re really not my responsibility,” Polan said. “I know that sounds like a copout, but that’s honest.”
Still, he said, “I am a man who . . . wants to be transparent about these matters.”
Polan said that about a decade ago, when he was in charge of Conception Abbey in Missouri, “We were told by our lawyers not to divulge that information. Times have changed since.”
Church leaders and victims advocacy groups say it’s important for the church to name abusers to be open about the scope of a sex abuse scandal that’s enveloped the Catholic church in waves since the 1980s, to acknowledge what was long denied or covered up and to help victims heal.
Conception has a list of abusive clergy members on its website. An affiliated abbey along the Wisconsin-Illinois border recently released a list. Public disclosure by Benedictine groups elsewhere in the United States has been spotty.
Abuse survivor Tanya Allen, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, abuse survivor Marc Floto and attorney Adam Slater walk down the steps of the Baltimore Basilica on May 9.
It’s still about four months before victims of sexual abuse at the hands of the Baltimore Catholic Archdiocese will be able file civil suits against the church. However, the wheels are already in motion for what could be a monumental payout to survivors. Meanwhile, the Archdiocese is likely to drag out the suits by challenging the constitutionality of the cases and possibly bringing them to trial.
A recent Maryland Attorney General’s Office report implicated 156 priests and church employees in abusing at least 600 children over the last 80 years, but experts in the field and legal analysts think it could actually be thousands of people who suffered at the hands of the Archdiocese.
“The Archdiocese of Baltimore, is the first archdiocese in the new world,” said Suzanne Sangree, senior counsel with Grant and Eisenhofer, a firm representing victims in Maryland. “It certainly was the first cathedral here. And it’s got enormous resources.”
The suits stem from a law passed in Maryland earlier this year that abolishes the statute of limitations on sex crimes for civil cases. However, the law doesn’t go into effect until Oct. 1.
The change in law has caught the eye of high-profile lawyers like Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer who led George Floyd’s legal team and is now representing some survivors.
Payouts can be massive. Since 1994, 20 archdioceses and dioceses in the United States have come to settlements with victims totaling $1.2 billion.
The largest of those settlements were in places like Los Angeles, where more than 550 people were awarded $660 million, and in Boston, where another approximately 550 people settled for $85 million.
The process, however, can be grueling and painful for victims.
Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles County), spent years sponsoring the bill to remove the statute of limitations.
He said the Baltimore Archdiocese fought him at every turn; it was only this year that the law finally passed.
“The Catholic Church repeatedly talked about how they were trying to work with people, but then they would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get lobbying firms and to try to intimidate me,” Wilson said. “They had people reach out to me and other members. They threatened to take away any and all assistance that the Catholic church provides to Baltimore City. They did any and everything they could do to stop this bill from passing. And yet, at the same time, telling their own members they care about these victims. They don’t.”
The Baltimore Archdiocese refused an interview request and would not provide a statement for this story. However, since the 1980s the Archdiocese has paid $13 million to 301 victims.
Now, victims and their lawyers are expecting a constitutional challenge to the law from the Church this fall.
The Church will likely use the statute of repose to sow doubt on the statute of limitations law.
Sangree says the legal tactic is used in construction work, and bars someone from suing a contractor for injuries from a building after a certain amount of time.
Wilson said that the ability for the Archdiocese to use the statute of repose was written into his bill in the last second without any discussion.
“Nobody knew that was in there,” he said. “I do not believe that that would be the right thing for the courts to interpret our intent differently than what we laid out in the four debates and arguments.”
If the law holds up after the constitutional challenge, Sangree and others say the Church will likely use its resources to bring cases to trial and drag out proceedings in order to pay less or intimidate victims who don’t feel comfortable testifying.
Elizabeth Letourneau, the director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at Johns Hopkins University, said trails can bring up traumatic memories for those who are still processing their abuse.
Kit Bateman is one of those survivors who is still coming to terms with what happened to him. A priest locked him in a confessional room and tried to rape him when he was 14.
“They took my innocence, they took my soul, they took my ability to celebrate the life of Jesus every day like I liked to do, for 50 years it was gone,” Bateman said. He went from someone who was in the choir and served as an altar boy to shunning organized religion.
It was only recently that he publicly acknowledged his abuse and decided to sue the Church.
Bateman said he decided to bring suit when he saw the Archdiocese trying to defeat the law abolishing age limits on civil suits for sex crimes.
“When I saw that, I thought, ‘Wow, what about my soul that you all took from me when I was 14?’” he said. “That moment is when I realized Archbishop William Lori did not understand — for a man of God — does not understand repentance.”
People who are sexually abused as children have a thumb on the scale against them, Letourneau said.
“We know that child sexual abuse increases the risk for serious health problems, including mental health problems like post-traumatic stress disorder child sexual abuse takes a real financial toll on survivors, who over the course of their lives will earn nearly $300,000 less than people who did not experience child sexual abuse,” she said.
Letourneau said settlements can often help pay for therapy, make up for gaps in finances or add a sense of closure to the events that took place years ago.
— Illinois Bishops Still Hiding Child-Molesting Clergy
Bishop Thomas Paprocki
By David Clohessy
Though I’m no longer a believer, in the wake of yet another jaw-dropping Catholic scandal, two Bible passages have coursed through my mind recently.
The first verse is John 8:32: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Illinois’ six bishops are no doubt familiar with it. Like many profound bits of wisdom, it’s short and sweet, with absolutely no qualifiers, exceptions or excuses.
Why then do these well-educated prelates apparently think the actual wording is “Some of the truth shall set you free, but you get to determine how much and when and how to reveal it?”
That’s the only rational conclusion that explains why, after decades of horrific, widespread, well-documented child sex crimes and cover-ups, these bishops still refuse to come clean about child-molesting clergy.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul impressively documented this continuing duplicitousness in his 696-page, just-released report on Catholic child sex crimes and cover-ups across the state.
When this investigation was first launched five years ago, only two Illinois bishops posted a list of “substantiated Catholic cleric child sex abusers” on their websites. Within months, at the prodding of AG staffers, the state’s other four bishops did likewise, per the report. (Our group, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, relentlessly prodded prelates to do this for over 20 years.)
At the probe’s outset, the church hierarchy provided on its websites the names of 103 priests who’ve been determined, by church institutions, to be “credibly accused” abusers.
During the investigation, after continued prodding from Raoul’s staff, the dioceses added 231 names to that list.
But that still didn’t capture all of the credibly accused priests. The report added yet another 160 clerics who worked in Illinois and have been substantiated as child sex abusers by Catholic sources but have not been disclosed as such by the Illinois dioceses. Now, 451 proven, admitted and/or credibly accused priests have been publicly identified (the total has been adjusted because some priests abused in multiple dioceses).
The second Bible verse that I can’t shake is this one, Luke 8:17: “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.”
Again, this one isn’t unknown to the Catholic hierarchy. (Non-Christians may prefer a more recent source for the same sentiment: Dr. Martin Luther King’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”)
Haven’t bishops — in Illinois and across the U.S. — learned that despite the best efforts of their high-priced lawyers and public relations professionals, victims are becoming increasingly empowered, civil attorneys are becoming more aggressive and creative, law enforcement is becoming more determined, and those who commit and conceal assaults on children are becoming “outed” more and more?
Why are predators’ names important?
First, kids’ safety. Many of the predators are deceased. But at least dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of proven, admitted and credibly accused child-molesting clerics — some with deeply rooted and extraordinarily powerful compulsion to assault youngsters — now live or work around largely unsuspecting families, friends, co-workers and even relatives. Though many are elderly, it’s dangerous to assume that serial offenders have somehow been magically and permanently cured of these nearly uncontrollable urges. Releasing their names — and ideally, their photos, work histories and last known whereabouts — will enable parents, police, prosecutors and the public to safeguard the vulnerable from them.
Second, survivors’ healing. Any therapist will tell you that many survivors feel vindication and validation (and sleep better at night) when they see that their abuser has been publicly exposed and is thus less apt to be able to molest again.
Third, the disclosure of these names is the clearest way to tell whether bishops have “reformed.”
More than 20 years ago, every U.S. bishop formally pledged to be “transparent” about clergy sexual abuse. That transparency is most important when it comes to the predators themselves. (Parents can best protect their kids if they know who and where the child molesters are. That’s why virtually every state has a sex offender registry.)
So if even now these men are parsing words, splitting hairs, making excuses so they can justify disclosing fewer names of credibly accused child molesters, then it’s very likely they’re violating other promises they’ve made about better screening, more psychological testing, paying for victims’ counseling, and truly cooperating with law enforcement.
Raoul’s report discloses the identities of 149 clerics who were or are in Illinois, have been deemed “credibly accused” of abuse by their bishop or other church supervisors, yet are listed on no Illinois Catholic website as “credibly accused.”
Think of it this way: The truth not only sets us free, it safeguards kids and also helps victims. Many current and former rank-and-file Catholics would submit that it also begins to restore some confidence in the higher echelons of the institution.
I mentioned I no longer have a faith life. “Have you lost your faith?” I’m sometimes asked. “No, it was stolen from me,” I reply, “by the predator priest who assaulted me and his corrupt supervisors who betrayed me.”
There are thousands like me across this country, enduring far worse than a lack of spirituality. Many are unemployed, underemployed, unemployable, agoraphobic, depressed, isolated, addicted, ashamed suicidal and suffering what the Tribune rightly calls the “unspeakable pain” that results from devastating attacks by once trusted priests during childhood and almost equally heinous betrayals by once revered bishops during adulthood.
We deserve better. And our kids deserve a safer and healthier childhood.
Neither they nor us are getting that from Catholic bishops who largely, like their predecessors and their predecessors, remain far too heavily fixated on protecting their careers, comfort and reputations rather than protecting their flocks.
The nearly 900-page report landed like a grenade when Josh Shapiro, then the attorney general of Pennsylvania, delivered it on a stage in Harrisburg, Pa., five years ago. It detailed widespread sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church throughout Pennsylvania, and a “sophisticated” cover-up by senior church officials. Victims of abuse and their families, sometimes visibly weeping, joined Mr. Shapiro on the stage.
More than 300 priests were found to have abused children, at least 1,000 of them, over the course of seven decades. The report reverberated at the highest levels of the church, with the Vatican expressing “shame and sorrow” over the findings. And it reached the pews, too: A Gallup poll the next year found that more than one-third of Catholics in the United States were considering leaving the faith because of “recent news about sexual abuse of young people by priests.”
In the years since the Pennsylvania report was published, it has inspired some 20 other investigations into the Catholic Church by state attorneys general.
Now the results of those investigations are rolling out, refocusing attention on the sprawling abuse scandal, and in some cases providing fresh details. The attorney general of Illinois, Kwame Raoul, released a report in May that found more than 450 credibly accused child sex abusers in the Catholic Church in Illinois since 1950. Almost 2,000 children under 18 were victims.
These reports have not led to many criminal prosecutions: many of the accused have died, or statutes of limitations have expired. But victims of clerical sexual abuse and their advocates say the reports have had a lasting impact in other ways. In some states, the reports have helped persuade legislators to extend time limits for victims to sue alleged abusers. And many victims say that such public and official acknowledgment of what happened is a welcome step.
“People talk about this being about sex, or a more academic analysis describes it as being about power,” said Terence McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, an advocacy group. “But it’s also about information.”
Investigations have been concluded in seven states so far, and others are continuing, according to CHILD USAdvocacy, a group that supports stronger child abuse legislation.
The status of some of the investigations is unclear, frustrating activist groups. For example, the attorney general’s office in California invited victims to come forward with their stories in 2018, and later issued subpoenas to several Catholic dioceses. The office has not issued a public update on the investigation in years, and did not respond to a request for comment.
The sheer numbers in the state reports published so far are staggering: 163 perpetrators in Missouri, 97 in Florida, 188 in Kansas. There have been long lists of credibly accused priests and others in Catholic ministry, thousands of pages of victims’ narratives, and front-page headlines about the findings. Attorneys general have been photographed with towering stacks of documents, hoisting doorstop publications that are the product of years of research and interviews.
The number of accused priests and incidents of abuse peaked between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s, and have declined significantly since then, according to a 2011 study commissioned by Catholic bishops and conducted by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York.
Bishops in the United States adopted new protocols in the early 2000s to crack down on abuse, including a range of “zero tolerance” policies. Historically, the church withheld information about priests who were sexually abusive, often moving them from parish to parish without informing people in the pews. The reports have pushed many dioceses to publish or update their own lists of credibly accused clergy members.
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, has disputed some aspects of the Illinois attorney general’s report, and questioned the way some of the data was presented. Even so, the archdiocese cooperated with the investigation, and Cardinal Cupich issued a statement apologizing “to all who have been harmed by the failure to prevent and properly respond to child sexual abuse by clerics.”
Victims of clerical sexual abuse and their relatives became emotional as Josh Shapiro, then the attorney general of Pennsylvania, spoke at a news conference in 2018 about a report on decades of abuse in the state’s Catholic dioceses.
“The A.G. reports are a measure of accountability, even though they don’t have a ton of teeth,” said Kathryn Robb, the executive director of CHILD USAdvocacy, who helped write the new Maryland law. “They educate the public, and they educate lawmakers to understand: they have this ‘holy crap’ moment.”
Survivor groups have urged the Department of Justice to mount a federal investigation of the church. Other groups have tried to sue the church under federal and state racketeering laws, but those suits have fizzled because of high legal hurdles, including the need to prove “injury to business or property,” according to Stephen Rubino, a lawyer who tried the civil racketeering approach in a suit against the Archdiocese of Camden in the early 1990s. (That case was settled; Mr. Rubino later attempted another racketeering suit that was dismissed.) Many dioceses, facing waves of new civil suits, have filed for bankruptcy.
For Mr. Shapiro, who is now the governor of Pennsylvania, the report became a signature achievement of his tenure as attorney general. On the campaign trail, he said, people frequently pulled him aside to thank him for the report, sometimes identifying themselves as victims of specific priests who were named in it.
“From a Pennsylvania perspective, the most significant thing is the way we gave a sense of justice to the victims here,” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview on Wednesday.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul of Illinois spoke in May about his office’s investigation into sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy members in the state.
Mike McDonnell, 54, says he was abused by two priests in the Philadelphia area starting when he was 11. He told no one at the time what had happened to him. He began drinking as a preteen, and later became addicted to drugs. His story was mentioned in a 2005 report by a grand jury on sexual abuse in the archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Mr. McDonnell said he probably would never have confronted the reality of the abuse, had he not seen the men who abused him named in the 2005 report. “Knowing myself, I would have continued to anesthetize myself and find other compartments in my soul to bury it,” he said.
At first, he said, he found it destabilizing to see his experience reflected in the report. He learned that he was not alone, and that leaders in the archdiocese of Philadelphia knew for years about the behavior of the two priests who abused him.
One of them, Francis Trauger, was convicted in 2020 of molesting two altar boys and was sentenced to 18 months to 36 months in prison. Mr. McDonnell, who now works for an advocacy group for victims of clerical sexual abuse, was in the courtroom for the sentencing.
“Seeing that in print and in the public record is really monumental for those who have not had a voice,” Mr. McDonnell said. “That validation is really a kick-start to one’s healing journey.”
