CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune
January 26, 2014|By Manya Brachear Pashman, Tribune reporter
At an anti-abortion rally last Sunday, Cardinal Francis George proclaimed to a downtown crowd of thousands that culture and societies can change.
“Because you tell the truth, the pro-life movement can come in from the cold,” said Chicago’s shivering archbishop, who later headed to Washington, D.C., for the 41st annual March for Life.
George was still in the nation’s capital Tuesday when the truth came out in Chicago about how he and his predecessors struggled to manage the clergy sex abuse crisis in the nation’s third-largest Roman Catholic archdiocese. That day, thousands of pages of secret church documents were released as part of a court settlement, showing how leaders of the local church for the past half-century failed to protect children from abusive priests.
As the cardinal left Sunday’s rally, he told the Tribune that the mistakes were in the past. But now George must face a painful present, with his flock stunned by the severity of his missteps and those of his predecessors Joseph Bernardin and John Cody.
“We’re disappointed and saddened,” said Ald. Tim Cullerton, 38th, a parishioner at Our Lady of Victory parish on the North Side.
Before last week’s document release, George admitted mishandling the case of convicted child molester Daniel McCormack, and those files remain sealed. But the newly-released documents chronicle how George and those under his leadership failed to take proper steps in the case of the Rev. Joseph Bennett, a priest accused of molesting two sisters from 1967 to 1973 at St. John de la Salle in Chicago. About a dozen more allegations have surfaced since.
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