CHICAGO (IL)
The New York Times
By MICHAEL PAULSON
JAN. 21, 2014
Thousands of documents detailing the Archdiocese of Chicago’s often halting response to sexual abuse allegations against 30 priests were posted online Tuesday after eight years of negotiations between victim advocates and Roman Catholic Church officials.
Most of the abuse was alleged to have taken place years ago, about half of the accused priests are dead and many of the victims have already been given financial settlements from the archdiocese. But the victims have pressed for publication of the files, arguing that the documents will provide an important form of reckoning, chronicling what church officials did, and did not do, when they learned of accusations that priests had molested minors.
“There can’t be safety in the future unless practices that were so dangerous in the past are fully known,” said Jeff Anderson, a lawyer representing many of the victims. “It really is a painful and sorrowful and frankly ugly portrait of what has been, but from that, there is hope that it will not be repeated, and to that end it brings comfort to survivors.”
The documents are certain to place an uncomfortable spotlight on Cardinal Francis E. George, the archbishop of Chicago, who is one of the leading intellectuals in the American church hierarchy and who was president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2007 to 2010, when many dioceses were grappling with the abuse crisis. Although the abuse took place before Cardinal George became archbishop, many of the victims first came forward after his arrival; some of the files concern cases in which Cardinal George’s response has been questioned, including that of the Rev. Joseph R. Bennett, whose disciplinary proceeding the cardinal briefly delayed, and the Rev. Norbert J. Maday, whose prison sentence the cardinal sought to reduce.
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