CHICAGO (IL)
USA Today [McLean VA]
May 16, 2025
By David McGrath
I wanted to root for the new pope who grew up just a few miles from me in Illinois. But his role in the Catholic hierarchy’s century-long campaign of organized crime against children made me hesitate.
While the rest of the country watched excitedly as white smoke heralded the election of a new pope, and then rejoiced after learning that Robert Francis Prevost from Chicago had been installed as Pope Leo XIV and the first American pontiff in history, I remained wary.
I wanted to root for the new pope who grew up just a few miles from where I lived in Blue Island, Illinois, and slightly farther from where I taught English at St. Francis De Sales High School in southeast Chicago. But his role in the Catholic hierarchy’s century-long campaign of organized crime against children made me hesitate.
Testimony by tens of thousands of survivors of sexual abuse committed by thousands of predatory priests has shown time and again that Catholic bishops and cardinals, including those among the 133 in the conclave that elected Leo, followed their own version of omerta, the sworn code of mafiosi to never rat on their own.
When I was 6, I was abused by a Catholic priest. He was a “good-time Charlie” pastor, coaching the school’s baseball team by day, and drinking beer, smoking cigars and talking sports with my father and uncles at night. Despite it being known that he was abusing other children, he was not reported to the police and was transferred to a largely African-American parish in another state, where records show that additional accusations of sexual abuse were made against him until his death.
‘Negligence’ that destroyed children’s lives
Even though the lives of young and innocent children were at stake, the first priority of Catholic bishops and priests has been self-preservation, professionally and financially.
When the new pope was leader of the Augustinian order in 2000, he allowed Father James Ray, a notoriously habitual sex offender, to live and say Mass at St. John Stone Friary in Chicago, just half a block from St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School.Get the The Right Track newsletter in your inbox.
And in 2022 in Peru, three women who told police of being sexually assaulted by a priest said the new pope, who was bishop of Chiclayo at the time, neglected to file a report or even start an investigation, while permitting the accused to continue his ecclesiastical duties, leading to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests filing a formal complaint against Cardinal Prevost in 2023.
To champions of the new pope, that may not sound like much: negligence, maybe, but not malicious conduct. But if a single one of the bishops or priests had come forward in my case, crimes committed against me and others might have ended sooner, or might not have ever been perpetrated. They couldn’t have not known that their “negligence” would destroy children’s lives.
Today, the church’s negligence continues to be a problem which, it was hoped, a new pope might address. The Associated Press reported as recently as 2019 that there were at least 1,700 credibly accused priests still on the loose as teachers, coaches and counselors, and living near children.
Is Pope Leo no worse than other high church officials?
Nonetheless, others have seemed to normalize Pope Leo’s past handling of the church’s scandal, and the Vatican officials have denied any wrongdoing on his part.
The University of Notre Dame’s Kathleen Sprows Cummings, professor of American studies and history, while not excusing Pope Leo, indicated that his lack of urgency about criminal priests was no worse than that of nearly all the other cardinals in the 1990’s: “It’s also entirely conceivable that he failed to act decisively in punishing perpetrators and supporting victims, but, sadly, that’s true of almost all the men who occupied positions of high leadership in the Catholic Church in the second half of the 20th century. The cardinal electors would be hard-pressed to find a man among their number whose record on this issue is spotless.”
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In the face of lukewarm reactions to church leaders’ insufficiency in dealing with accused priests, I’ve drawn on imagery in an attempt to effectuate better understanding: Try visualizing, for a moment, an innocent child riding a bicycle, a happy kid discovering the world, playing with his brothers and sisters. Then conjure the faces of grown men – bishops, cardinals, priests – standing nearby, watching in silence, as the defenseless child is abased by one of their own.
Watch them turn their backs and walk away, to resume their duties as “shepherds” in Christ’s church.
Forgive me if I do not join in the celebration of their most recently exalted shepherd.
Emeritus English professor, College of DuPage, David McGrath is author of “Far Enough Away,” a collection essays and Chicagoland stories.