OHIO
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: Thomas R. Hopp was ordained for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in 1966. He was transferred often among archdiocesan parishes until 1983, when he began a twelve-year stint as pastor of a Dayton parish, followed by seven years at another. Early on he taught at Alter High School in Kettering, and he was an Academic Dean at St. Gregory’s Seminary for a year in the mid-1970s.
In 1997 the archdiocese received an anonymous complaint that Hopp had displayed “odd” behavior toward a child; Hopp was put “on notice” – he was not to be alone with children except during confession. In April 2002 Hopp was placed on administrative leave after a man reported to the archdiocese that Hopp had sexually abused him when he was a 12-year-old altar boy in 1980. Hopp was temporary administrator of St. Michael’s in Ft. Laramie at the time. He admitted to the abuse. Another man filed suit in 2004, claiming sexual abuse as a 12 to 14-year-old by Hopp in the early 1980s at St. Denis in Versailles. A third man claimed in a lawsuit that Hopp sexually abused him when he was a 12 to 15-year-old St. Michael’s altar boy in the early 1980s. The suit was dismissed in 2006 by the Ohio Supreme Court, which cited the statute of limitations.
Hopp was permanently removed from ministry by the Vatican in 2005, and given a “life of prayer and penance.” He died December 21, 2014.
Ordained: 1966
Died: December 21, 2014
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