ILLINOIS/KENTUCKY
Chicago Tribune
By David Heinzmann, Christy Gutowski and Stacy St. Clair, Chicago Tribune reporters
April 26, 2013
WHITLEY CITY, Ky. — Five years after church officials ordered the Rev. Carroll Howlin to stop functioning as a missionary priest in this isolated mountain community, Joliet diocesan leaders received a letter from a suburban pastor that illuminated just how little the diocese had done to enforce its own protective measures amid a crippling sexual abuse scandal.
Howlin, an avuncular-looking priest who moved here more than 30 years ago, had been suspended in 2002 after he was accused of molesting a teenage boy — the second of four such allegations he would face in his career. The Joliet Diocese later substantiated claims involving two other victims, including one who committed suicide at 17.
Church officials removed Howlin from public ministry, but otherwise left him alone in Kentucky with a $1,100-a-month pension. He was allowed to continue living in this remote community where he once helped run the Good Shepherd Catholic Chapel, providing food, clothing and other social services.
It appears officials even left Howlin alone in 2007 when the Rev. Gregory Rothfuchs of St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Joliet wrote to the diocese that he had discovered the monthly collection his parish had taken up for Good Shepherd for three decades was going directly into Howlin’s personal bank account and the nuns running the mission had not seen a penny.
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