UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: A priest of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate ordained in 1950 in Belleville IL, Fitzgerald moved in and out of a number of dioceses during his career, including Belleville, Springfield and Peoria IL, St. Paul and Minneapolis, Duluth, Crookston and New Ulm MN, Sioux Falls SD, and Springfield-Cape Girardeau MO. He was involved with orphanages in Peoria IL and Sisseton SD. He returned to his Order in Belleville sometime in the early 1990s and died in 2009. Fitzgerald was accused in a 2010 lawsuit of having repeatedly sexually abused two residents of the Tekakwitha Indian Orphanage in the 1960s: a girl ages 4-13, and a 10 or 11-year-old boy. In a February 2014 lawsuit Fitzgerald was accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy in around 1978. He had met the boy while at a pastoral education program at a parish in the New Ulm diocese, and invited him to serve as an altar boy for two weeks at his Squaw Lake MN parish. It is during those two weeks that the abuse is said to have occurred. The lawsuit also claims Fitzgerald sexually abused another child during his time in Squaw Lake, on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation near Bemidji MN. A civil trial related to the lawsuit began in October 2015.
Born: December 9, 1919
Ordained: May 1950
Died: September 7, 2009
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