MORRISTOWN (NJ)
Daily Voice Suffolk County [Long Island NY]
August 15, 2025
By Cecilia Levine
Long-buried secrets of clergy abuse at Delbarton, one of New Jersey’s most prestigious all-boys Catholic schools, may finally spill into public view, the New York Post reports — and a Newark bishop now being considered for cardinal is at the center of it.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is demanding that Church leaders block Auxiliary Bishop Elias R. Lorenzo, O.S.B., from becoming the next Archbishop of Newark, citing his decades of leadership at Delbarton School and St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown during alleged abuse at the hands of more than a dozen monks and a lay teacher, according to a press release issued earlier this month.
The advocacy group said Delbarton officials previously disclosed that 13 monks and one lay teacher were credibly accused of sexually abusing 30 victims in the 1970s and 1980s. SNAP maintains that lawsuits were quietly settled, abusers remained under secret restrictions, and leaders showed no remorse.
Lorenzo, 64, held top roles at Delbarton and St. Mary’s Abbey from 1995 through 2009. In 2002 he was named liason to the Abbey’s review board on sexual misconduct complaints, SNAP said.
In June, New Jersey’s top court ruled that a new grand jury investigation into clerical abuse across the state can move forward, and insiders say Delbarton’s decades-old cover-up will be part of it, The New York Post reported.
The Camden Diocese had fought the probe for seven years but dropped its legal battle in May, NorthJersey.com reported.
Now, SNAP is calling for an independent investigation, full disclosure of findings, counseling for survivors, and Bishop Lorenzo’s removal from consideration as Cardinal Joseph Tobin’s eventual successor, according to the group’s press release.
Born in Brooklyn in 1960, Lorenzo was ordained a priest in 1989 and has held leadership roles within the Benedictine Order around the globe, according to the Archdiocese of Newark. Pope Francis appointed him Auxiliary Bishop of Newark in 2020.
But SNAP argues that résumé cannot erase his record at Delbarton.
“His promotion was made despite the obvious implications of Lorenzo’s decades of debauchery at Delbarton, where child sexual abuse occurred under his watch,” the statement reads. “SNAP believes no one with such a compromised record on child protection should be elevated within the Church.”
Daily Voice has reached out to the Archdiocese of Newark and Delbarton for comment.