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Wages of sin: ‘Banned’ priests still receiving aid from Catholic church

By Peter Smith
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
March 23, 2019

https://bit.ly/2TTIxhI


When he was removed from the priesthood in February over the sexual molestation of minors, the 88-year-old former Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick didn’t lose a roof over his head. He’s staying in a monastery in Kansas.

When Australian Cardinal George Pell’s conviction for sexual abuse was announced the same month, the church didn’t need to provide such housing — because the penitentiary system was providing it.

But such cases raise a question that also pertains to priests who are removed due to one or more substantiated cases of sexual abuse. 

Since 2002 in the United States, the policy has been to ban such priests from ministry for life.

But then what becomes of them? Does the church still owe a cleric a living even if he betrayed the trust placed in him?

It mainly depends on whether a diocese keeps him under its wing or not, and if it doesn’t, whether he’s able to fend for himself.

And when the church does provide a living, it’s typically at subsistence levels.

“It’s basically not putting them out on the street,” said Sister Sharon Euart, a canon lawyer and executive director of the Resource Center for Religious Institutes, based in Maryland. They would get food, shelter and other basic needs but no luxuries, said Sister Euart, a former executive coordinator of the Canon Law Society of America and canonical consultant for religious institutes and diocesan bishops. 

Since the U.S. bishops adopted a zero-tolerance policy in 2002, there are two scenarios for handling a priest who is found to have committed abuse:

1. A bishop could start a “canonical” process within the church legal system, asking the Vatican to defrock the priest (“dismissed from the clerical state,” in canonical language).

2. In other cases, particularly “for reasons of advanced age or infirmity,” a bishop could allow the man to retain the technical status of priest but with a lifetime ban on public ministry and such trappings as clerical garb and the title “Father.”

He’d be assigned “a life of prayer and penance.” 

In scenario Number 2, the church’s canon law requires that “provision must always be made so that he does not lack those things necessary for his decent support.”

Even in scenario Number 1, the church is required to provide for an expelled cleric if he’s “truly in need,” the canon law says.

The 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report — which found more than 300 accused priests in six dioceses across the state over the past seven decades and set in motion similar investigations around the country — made several references to the fact that dioceses were keeping known predators on their payrolls. 

But bishops cited their own requirements under canon law to take care of a priest’s basic needs.

The Diocese of Pittsburgh lists 23 priests on its website who have been removed from ministry over several decades and who are still living.

The site doesn’t break down which ones have been defrocked and which remain priests but are forbidden from public ministry.

Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik, in a recent pastoral letter, pledged to provide a full financial accounting of spending related to the scandal of sexual abuse. That includes how much compensation has been paid.

But in cases where an abuser has remained a priest, the compensation is “less than half of what a priest in active ministry receives,” said a statement form the Rev. Nicholas Vaskov, spokesman for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

“Regarding housing, priests removed from ministry cannot reside on parish property,” he said. “Those who have been dismissed from the clerical state receive no sustenance, no severance and are responsible for their own housing.”

The diocese’s Clergy Office monitors such priests, a duty that will soon be moved to a new Office for Investigations and Monitoring in a reorganization. That office will be staffed by a law enforcement professional, the diocese says.

While some may disagree with paying a basic living to priests who have abused, “it does necessitate the opportunity to remain in contact with them, to know their whereabouts and to easily facilitate follow-up regarding the allegations against them,” Father Vaskov said.

In the neighboring Diocese of Greensburg, none of the surviving priests named in the grand jury report “receive a salary or housing from the diocese,” said spokesman Jerry Zufelt. “They do receive their vested pension. The laicization (defrocking) process is underway for all of them.”

Very often, the priests may have been found credibly accused by their superiors but are not convicted in criminal court, so they aren’t required to register as sex offenders.

But David Clohessy of the national group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests urged more rigorous measures to watch over such priests and account for them publicly.

“No one wants anyone, even sex offenders, to be homeless or hungry,” he said. “That said, if church officials use parishioner donations to financially help predator priests, there should be public safety ‘strings’ attached. Molesters who get church funds should live in supervised, secure, independent facilities overseen by independent mental health professionals, with full public knowledge of who and where the predators are.”

Even before 2002, when the church process made it more difficult to remove men from the status of priest, dioceses had to figure out how to provide basic needs for such priests. 

In the 1990s and early 2000s, for example,  the Diocese of Pittsburgh paid one convicted priest, Richard Zula, between $500 and $1,000 a month as a stipend for several years (some paid in lump sum upon his release from prison), according to the grand jury.

Another Pittsburgh priest in the 1990s, George Zirwas, angled for an increase in his stipend by saying he knew of other priests’ illegal acts, the grand jury said. The report said he got a raise, but didn’t say the amount, after disavowing such knowledge in writing.

Both priests are now deceased.

In Mr. McCarrick’s case, he has been living at St. Fidelis Friary in Victoria, Kan., since shortly after last year’s initial revelation that he had been found to have committed sexual abuse. 

After the Vatican dismissed Mr. McCarrick from the clerical state in February, the superior of the friary has said he could stay on at least through the superior’s term in office, said Susan Gibbs, a former spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Washington.

Income isn’t an issue, she said, as he hasn’t taken a salary in four decades. Priests don’t take a vow of poverty, and some have means independent of the church.

Contact: petersmith@post-gazette.com




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