Roman Catholic Church Scandal

▪ 2003

      The Roman Catholic Church was rocked by accusations of sexual abuse and cover-ups around the world during 2002. The scandal spurred the resignations of Bernard Cardinal Law (see Biographies (Law, Bernard Cardinal )) of Boston and other bishops in Australia, Ireland, Poland, and the United States as Catholics and other commentators accused the hierarchy of gross negligence in its failure to take action against priests accused of abuse. By year's end more than 300 of the 46,000 Catholic priests in the United States had either resigned or been removed from duty in response to claims of sexual abuse, hundreds of civil suits seeking millions of dollars in damages were pending, and more than a dozen criminal grand juries were investigating whether church leaders had violated the law by failing to report crimes committed by priests.

      The storm of controversy erupted in the U.S. in January when John Geoghan, a defrocked priest, was convicted of having fondled a boy 10 years earlier. Soon more than 130 people claimed that he had abused them at one time or another over a period of three decades, and 118 people sued Law for his failure to discipline or remove Geoghan even after allegations had been made against the priest. The cardinal was later accused of similar inaction against the Rev. Paul Shanley, a retired priest who was accused of having molested at least 26 children over three decades. After Geoghan was sentenced to 10 years in prison in February, a wave of reports of similar misconduct and inaction by church officials surfaced. The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland agreed to pay $110 million to settle cases involving hundreds of people who said that they were abused by clergy over several decades. In Australia the church acknowledged having paid some victims of clergy sexual abuse to stay silent.

      In April, Pope John Paul II called the sexual abuse of children a crime and “an appalling sin in the eyes of God.” He said that there was “no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young” and expressed “solidarity and concern” for the victims. His remarks came during a Vatican meeting with American Catholic bishops, who were considering what steps to take as a body in response to the scandal. Two months later the bishops met in Dallas, Texas, and heard testimony from victims of abuse. Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., who headed the American bishops' conference, acknowledged that the prelates had not reported the allegations to civil authorities because they were “worried more about the possibility of scandal than in bringing about the kind of openness that helps prevent abuse.”

      The bishops drafted a policy urging prelates in all 194 American dioceses to report all allegations of sexual abuse of minors to civil authorities and expel offenders from public ministry. They also created a national lay review board to name publicly each year those dioceses that failed to comply with the policy. The Vatican and some experts in church law, however, said that the draft policy would violate the rights of priests in an effort to show concern for victims of abuse. Following consultations with the Vatican, the American bishops met in Washington in November and approved a compromise policy that allowed each bishop to conduct an inquiry to determine whether a molestation claim was credible. If the claim was deemed plausible, the priest would be put on leave and appear before a clerical tribunal to determine his guilt or innocence. Victims would have to come forward with accusations by age 28, although bishops could ask the Vatican for a waiver. The prelates pledged to report all allegations involving children to civil authorities and sent the policy to the Vatican, where it was approved in December.

      In December lawyers representing plaintiffs in civil suits against the archdiocese of Boston released 3,000 pages of files documenting how priests had sexually abused both children and adults and used illegal drugs. The files also showed a pattern in which Law and other church leaders had routinely transferred accused clergy to other parishes without disciplining them. The cardinal went to Rome to consult with Pope John Paul II and other Vatican officials while reports indicated that a grand jury was preparing to question Law and seven bishops who had been under his authority. The new revelations spurred Law's resignation.

      Law was not the only high-profile Catholic to be brought down by the scandal. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee's Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who had taken an aggressive stand against sexual misconduct by priests, resigned in May following the disclosure that his archdiocese had reached a $450,000 settlement in 1998 with a man who had accused the prelate of having sexually abused him more than two decades earlier. Archbishop Juliusz Paetz of Poznan, Pol., an appointee and longtime acquaintance of John Paul II, stepped down in March as the Vatican began investigating accusations that he had made sexual advances on priests. Bishop Brendan Comiskey of Ferns, Ire., resigned in April following criticism of his failure to act on abuse complaints in his diocese, and the nation's bishops acknowledged what they called the “justifiable anger and distress” that had caused “great pain and shame” to the Catholic Church in Ireland. Archbishop George Pell of Sydney, Australia, stepped down from his post for two months until an inquiry cleared him of charges of having abused a 12-year-old boy four decades earlier.

      As the year drew to a close, the diocese of Manchester, N.H., reached a settlement giving state prosecutors oversight of its policies on how to handle abuse claims in the wake of threats of possible criminal charges against the diocese. Officials of the archdiocese of Boston considered a declaration of bankruptcy after having settled lawsuits for about $50 million, and legislatures in at least three states passed legislation waiving or extending the statute of limitations for civil cases involving child sexual abuse.

Darrell J. Turner

* * *