STEUBENVILLE (OH)
National Catholic Reporter
October 31, 2018
By Jenn Morson
The Portiuncula Chapel on the campus of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, is, according to university material, “a grace-filled haven for quiet meditation … set aside for private prayer and Eucharistic adoration.”
The chapel is a pilgrimage site and the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary has decreed that Catholic faithful who pray there receive a “plenary indulgence,” releasing them, according to church teaching, from temporal punishment due to sin and reducing their time in purgatory after their deaths.
Its construction was the passion of Franciscan Fr. Samuel Tiesi, a revered campus minister at Franciscan University who died in 2001. Tiesi proposed the project, designed the chapel and raised most of the money to build it.
A plaque stood at the entrance to the chapel walkway, dedicating the chapel to Tiesi. His portrait hung in the chapel until Sept. 10, when the plaque was covered and the portrait removed. Eventually, the plaque was also removed, an empty pedestal left in its place. That small action exposed a 30-year-old secret: that Tiesi — part of the trinity of Franciscan priests including Michael Scanlan and Augustine Donegan, best friends, who made Franciscan University a model conservative Catholic university — was a serial abuser of young women.
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