Cardinal Tim Dolan Is Bringing Disgraced Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Preach on Holy Thursday; Snap’s David Clohessy Comments

Voice from the Desert
March 30, 2012

http://reform-network.net/?p=15851

Disgraced Catholic official to preach in NYC; SNAP responds

For immediate release: Friday, March 30

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Executive Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com)

Noted Catholic blogger Rocco Palmo (of “Whispers in the Loggia”) reports that Cardinal Tim Dolan is bringing disgraced Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to preach next Thursday.

Like he did last year with a New York teenager, Cardinal Dolan is callously and needlessly rubbing even more salt into already deep and still fresh wounds of hundreds of clergy sex abuse

Tens of thousands of Catholic clerics could preach in St. Pat’s next week. Almost any of them would be less upsetting and hurtful than Rigali.

Nine years after bishops promised to “reform,” Rigali, under pressure, was forced to suspend 21 accused Philly priests on one day in March of 2011. These suspensions took place exactly one month after Rigali wrote his flock assuring them that there were no credibly-accused priests remaining within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. In 2005, Rigali kept silent as his lawyer blasted prosecutors as “anti-Catholic” in the wake of a second scathing report about widespread clergy sex crimes and cover ups in his archdiocese.

We suggest that Dolan disinvite Rigali and replace him with Winona Bishop John Quinn. Earlier this month, he warned parishioners and the public in his area about a notorious, defrocked serial predator priest, Thomas Adamson, who had just moved back to Minnesota. Bishop Quinn did immediately what many bishops today refuse to do: take quick and positive action regarding clergy sex crimes.

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Last year, a 16 year old girl in Dolan’s archdiocese reported being molested three times by her Bronx pastor and employer, Fr. Jaime Duenas. Police arrested the priest. But Dolan posted on his personal blog harsh statement about the girl, questioning why she returned to her job at the parish even after she’d been assaulted. (http://blog.archny.org/?p=1556).

Neither Dolan nor Rigali, to the best of our knowledge, ever acted so responsibly as Quinn with kids’ safety. If church officials really want parishioners and others to believe that the church wants to be open and honest about clergy sex crimes, they should herald a man like Bishop Quinn, not honor Justin Rigali.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. SNAP was founded in 1988 and has more than 12,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers and increasingly, victims who were assaulted in a wide range of institutional settings like summer camps, athletic programs, Boy Scouts, etc. Our website isSNAPnetwork.org)

Contact – David Clohessy (14-566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com ), Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747, bblaine@snapnetwork.org), Peter Isely (414-429-7259, peterisely@yahoo.com), Barbara Dorris (314-862-7688 home, 314-503-0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com)