LANCASTER (PA)
Lancaster Online
August 5, 2018
THE ISSUE
Bishop Ronald W. Gainer of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg held a press conference Wednesday to apologize for the sexual abuse of children by priests and others in the church over decades. The Harrisburg diocese also released a list of 71 clergy members and seminarians alleged to have sexually abused children since 1947. LNP reported Friday that the list included the late Monsignor Francis Joseph Taylor, who served as Lancaster Catholic High School’s principal from 1958 to 1975, and the late Rev. Thomas Ronald Haney, who was the assistant to the principal at LCHS from 1961 to 1964 and directed the school’s athletic program. According to LNP records, Haney previously had served three years as assistant pastor at St. Anne Catholic Church in Lancaster; later in his life, he was known to many local Catholics as the executive editor of The Catholic Witness, the diocesan newspaper, and as a spokesman for the diocese.
In April 2014, soon after he was installed as the 11th bishop of the Diocese of Harrisburg, Gainer told LNP that the way the Catholic Church had handled child sexual abuse cases in the past was “a disgrace” and “a wound for our church.”
He was right, of course.
Before he took over the Diocese of Harrisburg, Gainer was criticized by SNAP, or the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, for the way he had handled sexual abuse allegations against two priests while leading the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky.
Last week, however, Gainer seemed genuinely intent on reversing the church’s past mistakes.
And he made strides toward that aim when, at his press conference and in a column LNP published on Friday’s front page, he expressed his “great sadness at the horror that innocent children were the victims of egregious actions committed against them.”
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