10 Names Added to List of Clergy with ‘substantiated’ Sex Misconduct Allegations

By Robert Herguth
Sun Times
November 29, 2018

https://bit.ly/2KNTR7j

At a closed-door gathering in August with young men studying to be priests at the Catholic Church’s seminary in Mundelein, Cardinal Blase Cupich boasted that the Archdiocese of Chicago’s “record” on sex abuse is “clean.”

“We are not what happened” in Pennsylvania, he said, referring to a grand jury report that’d been recently released showing decades of priests raping children and bishops covering up in that state.

Cupich also told the seminarians that an ongoing inquiry by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office into the handling of sexual predator priests in Illinois was no big deal, since the archdiocese, the church’s arm in Cook and Lake counties, already previously turned over all relevant information.

But on Wednesday night, Cupich’s office brought his past comments into question as the archdiocese highlighted the names of 10 more ex-priests and deacons — some deceased — with “substantiated allegations” of sexual misconduct with minors. The names were added to a lengthy public list of ex-clerics with dark histories.