The Class of `74: Where are they now?

CHICAGO (IL)
Medium

December 4, 2018

By Pat Navin

May 8, 1974 was an unseasonably cold, gusty and stormy day in Chicago. But inside the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in northwest suburban Mundelein, the assembled faithful beamed with warmth, pride and a sense of peace. Their sons, grandsons, brothers, nephews, cousins and friends were about to be ordained into the priesthood by John Patrick Cardinal Cody, prelate of the Archdiocese of Chicago, in a ceremony filled with all the pomp and circumstance the institution could muster.

The newly-ordained priests had already received notices of their first parish assignments and they were anxious to make their marks: baptizing babies, ministering to the sick and dying, celebrating the Eucharist, listening to confessions, presiding over weddings and funerals, and, apparently, for at least four of the new priests, sexually abusing boys (and, for one of them, girls as well).

Out of the nearly 100 Diocesan priests in the Chicago Archdiocese who have been credibly accused of abuse according to Bishop-Accountability.org (the Archdiocese puts the number at 65), the class of `74 carries the distinction of having the largest number of accused priests of any single ordination class. Three of the priests — Richard Barry “Doc Bartz, John Walter Calicott and Robert D. Craig — hit the ground running, with credible abuse allegations from their very first parish assignments. The fourth, James Craig Hagan, had not collected any substantiated reports from his first assignment, but made up for lost time at his second parish. Hagan was also the only one of the four who abused both boys and girls.

Their highly edited and redacted files, which became available when the Archdiocese was finally forced to make them public in 2014, include sordid details of abuse and a litany of excuses, cover-ups, reassignments from parish to parish to parish to positions as hospital chaplains or seminary officials. They contain notes from Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Cody’s successor, and other Archdiocese religious administrators encouraging the abusers’ efforts at self-improvement and offering prayers of support. The files also contain mundane housekeeping notes on how the documented abusers would continue to receive their salaries, status reports on payments for their health insurance, auto insurance and other expenses, and options for future living arrangements.

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