What makes James Griffith stand out amid the scandal over sexually abusive clerics is how many chances the Catholic church hierarchy had to tell the public about him — and how many times it failed to do so.

[Photo above: Deacon James Griffith was moved to Chicago and other church jurisdictions after being convicted of a child sex offense in 1988 in Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville Metro Police Department]

More than a decade after pleading guilty in 1988 to sexually abusing a young boy in Louisville, Kentucky, Deacon James Griffith was moved by his religious order to a monastery next to Immaculate Conception School in Norwood Park.

The Passionists — the Catholic religious order that at the time was overseeing the church and school just north of the Kennedy Expressway on the Northwest Side — say he was assigned there in 2002 “to work in the provincial office” on the…