UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: Carroll Howlin was a priest of the Joliet diocese, ordained in 1961. He assisted at parishes in several Illinois towns and he was a teacher and spiritual director at St. Charles Borremeo Seminary High School and College in Lockport. In May 1977 Howlin requested and was granted permission to serve as a mission priest in Kentucky. From then on he was administrator at Good Shepherd parish in Whitley City. Although he worked in Kentucky, he remained a Joliet priest. In 1993 Howlin was accused of sexually abusing a St. Charles student in the 1970s; he was sent for a psychological evaluation and was allowed to stay in ministry. In April 2002 Howlin was removed from ministry after another former St. Charles student accused him of sexual abuse in the 1970s. That accusation was followed by another from a man who said Howlin sexually abused him in the 1970s when he was a boy, during a camping trip. In 2003 Howlin was again accused, this time of having sexually abused two Kentucky boys, who were brothers, in the 1990s. One of the boys committed suicide at age 17. Howlin has been the subject of a number of lawsuits. After his removal he went on to live for many years in a guesthouse of a four-acre compound belonging to “Hills and Hollers Ministries.” He was apparently unmonitored and continued to receive a pension from the Joliet diocese. He died in May 2015.
Born: April 6, 1934
Ordained: 1961
Died: May 5, 2015
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