Bishop conducts listening session about clergy sex abuse

By Roger Mckinney
Columbia Daily Tribune
November 05, 2018

https://bit.ly/2APjXDi

Catholic Bishop Shawn McKnight greets Chris Concannon, a member of the St Thomas More Newman Center in Columbia, following a listening session Monday at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. Photo by Don Shrubshell

“God of justice and compassion, protect all children from abuse and deliver us from hate.”

That was part of the closing prayer delivered Monday by Shawn McKnight, bishop of the Jefferson City diocese, after a listening session at Our Lady of Lourdes Church about the Catholic sex abuse crisis.

There was raw emotion and thoughtful analysis among participants who spoke for more than an hour. McKnight will use the information he gathered Monday and at other listening sessions at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops next week.

“There are a lot of common themes,” McKnight said after the session. He said he thinks and feels the same as many of those who spoke.

“We’re all united in this one desire that this crisis would be solved as Christ would want us to,” McKnight said.

Steve Concannon, an attorney in Boonville, referred to a list of “reflection questions” in the program. One was: Do you think bishops should resign if it is found they are culpable in enabling sexual abuse?

“We talked about credibility earlier,” Concannon said. “Why is this even a question? It’s insulting that this is even a question.”

Another speaker said the priests are committing crimes and need to be held criminally accountable. Yet another said that justice demands that the victims be compensated.

One participant identified the problem as “homosexual predation on young men.”

David Clohessy, St. Louis director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests, said by phone Monday that the Bishop’s listening session is meaningless on its own.

“They don’t make a single child safer,” Clohessy said. “They don’t expose a single predator. They don’t discipline a single enabler.”

He said almost 7,000 priests have been accused of assaulting almost 100,000 children.

“That did not happen because some bishop neglected to do a listening session,” Clohessy said.

Republican Missouri Attorney Gen. Josh Hawley, who is running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill. Hawley in August announced an investigation of clergy sex abuse in Missouri, but SNAP, Clohessy’s group, dismissed it as “playing politics” and worthless because Hawley is not issuing subpoenas, but instead relying on voluntary cooperation of the church.

The Missouri Attorney General’s office on Monday didn’t provide an update on the status of the investigation.

Clohessy said the bishop and his colleagues are scared.

“Step back,” Clohessy said the bishop is saying with the listening sessions. “We’re handling this ourselves. You don’t need to stick your noses in here.”

A priest who later was convicted of abusing more than 30 boys, lived in the rectory of Our Lady of Lourdes in Columbia for a time in 1985, but the diocese said he had no official role. Fred Lenczycki was convicted in Illinois in 2004 and was released to live with his sister in 2009, according to the Chicago Tribune. He was declared “sexually violent” in Illinois, according the to story.

Letters and other documents related to Lenczycki are in online files of St. Paul, Minn., law office of Jeff Anderson & Associates.

In a Jan. 14, 1985, letter, Lenczycki left his address at Our Lady of Lourdes and wrote that he had celebrated mass at St. James. A Jan. 16, 1985, letter to Joseph Imesch, bishop in Joliet, Ill., was written on Our Lady of Lourdes letterhead.

“There is no way I can tell you how much I appreciate all the support you’ve given me,” the priest wrote to the Illinois bishop. “As I’ve said before, I know I’ve caused you some difficulty and I’m sorry for that. I never imagined things would get so complicated, involving and disturbing so many people. I’m anxious for the time when I can return the pound of flesh to you.”

Helen Osman, director of communications for the Jefferson City diocese, wrote in an email that the dioceses has no documentation indicating Lenczycki requested permission to serve as a priest in the diocese. She wrote that he was in the state of California by mid-March 1985, according to documents in the attorneys’ file.

“The Diocese of Jefferson City has received no allegations against Frederick Lenczycki,” Osman wrote.

McKnight sought to impress those in attendance that he wants to resolve the problem of sexual abuse by priests.

“I can guarantee you I will take with me the passion and the seriousness about this issue that you have delivered,” McKnight said at the close of the session. “Things cannot continue as it has.”