MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Monday, Feb. 2, 2015
For more information: David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP Director (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com
Another predator priest is exposed
He worked in three area Catholic dioceses
Cleric was in Belleville, Springfield MO & Springfield IL
Church investigation into his alleged crimes is re-opened
Sex abuse victims to bishops: “How many others are you hiding?”
For at least ten years, a priest quietly lived and worked in two Illinois dioceses and one in Missouri. Last week, Catholic officials disclosed that they are re-opening an investigation into accusations that he sexually abusing a boy and a girl in South Dakota.
Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, learned last week that Fr. J. Vincent Fitzgerald spent time in the Belleville, Springfield MO and Springfield IL dioceses. The group is urging these three bishops to “aggressively use church bulletins, parish websites, and pulpit announcements to find others who saw, suspected or suffered” child sex crimes by Fitzgerald.
In 2010, Fr. Fitzgerald was sued for reportedly assaulting two children in the late 1960s at the Tekakwitha Indian Mission in Sisseton, South Dakota.
According to the Official Catholic Directory:
–From 1995-2002, Fr. Fitzgerald lived at St. Henry’s Oblate Residence 60 N. 60th in Belleville. The residence is run by a Catholic religious order called the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, to which Fr. Fitzgerald belonged. (It’s the group to which just-retired Cardinal Francis George of Chicago also belongs.)
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