SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican - MassLive [Springfield MA]
July 7, 2026
By Daniel Jackson
Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of child sexual abuse.
SPRINGFIELD — Bishop Joseph F. Maguire once said he felt “enduring and deep regret” that he did not do more to protect a youth from abuse when he governed the Catholic Church in Western Massachusetts.
A lawsuit filed last week accuses Maguire of engaging in abuse himself decades ago.
The lawsuit says Maguire and his predecessor, Bishop Christopher Weldon, sexually abused a boy living at institutional home for children in West Springfield, with at least one incident occurring in the early 1970s.
“His abusers were the two most senior officers of the institution responsible for his care, who used the full weight of their religious authority, institutional power, and explicit threats of divine punishment and disbelief to ensure his permanent silence,” reads the complaint filed July 1 in Hampden Superior Court.
Maguire, who died in 2014 at age 95, led the Diocese of Springfield from 1977 until he retired in 1991. His name is absent from the diocese’s list of clergy found to have credible accusations of child sexual abuse against them. Two people who have worked with sexual abuse victims for years said this is the first time they’ve heard of an accusation of abuse against Maguire.
Weldon, meanwhile, appears among the dozens named. The entry says there is only one credible allegation against Weldon, and it dates back to the early 1960s.
Asked about Maguire and the credibly accused list, Norman Charest, victims assistance coordinator for the diocese, directed questions to the diocese’s attorneys, who did not return a request for comment.
When asked about Maguire, diocese spokesperson Carolee McGrath said the diocese does not comment on pending legal matters.
The lawsuit, filed by a Hampden County man, seeks compensation for the psychological, emotional and physical injuries he suffered. The Republican does not name victims of sexual abuse.
The complaint details eight claims against the Roman Catholic bishop of Springfield, including civil conspiracy, infliction of emotional distress and battery.
“During Weldon and Maguire’s tenures, sexual abuse of minors by clergy was so routine that it constituted a general practice or policy of the (Roman Catholic bishop of Springfield),” the lawsuit claims.
The abuse at the hands of the bishops, the complainant says, robbed him of “the essence of his childhood,” and left him with “lasting religious and spiritual injury,” which makes him unable to enter churches to attend funerals or weddings.
As a boy, he was sent to live at Our Lady of Providence, an institutional home for children in West Springfield also known as Brightside, “because his mother did not wish to care for him,” according to the complaint.
Brightside, which the Sisters of Providence founded in 1881 as an orphanage, closed its residential program in 2010. Its campus along Riverdale Street was turned into housing for older adults with low incomes.
The two bishops were familiar faces at Brightside when the victim resided there, according to the lawsuit.
Weldon abused the boy after approaching him during a pizza party and telling him his brother was dead, the suit claims. It said the bishop brought the boy into a chapel, put him on his lap, and forced the boy to touch him, telling him after that he would go to hell if he told anyone. At the time, the boy was about 4 or 5 years old.
One time, Maguire sodomized the boy as he was being punished by being placed in a closet, the lawsuit claims, and in another instance, he entered a pool changing room to force the boy to perform oral sex.
The man “repressed, suppressed, and dissociated the memories” for decades, according to the complaint, until 2022 when he told his wife for the first time.
The man is represented by attorneys from Boston-based firm Sweeney Merrigan, who did not return a request for comment.
This is not the first time Maguire’s name has come up in a lawsuit in the fallout of the clergy sex abuse crisis.
Maguire settled a lawsuit in 2012 that accused him of allowing a priest to remain in the ministry after he molested two boys in 1976. The suit, which was settled for $500,000, also named Bishop Thomas Dupre as a defendant, Maguire’s successor who is today credibly accused of abusing minors in the 1970s and early ‘80s.
“I only wish that in 1976 as a new bishop, I could have foreseen the true nature of one who violated our trust with such devastating harm to his victims,” Maguire said at the time in a statement.
John Stobierski, the attorney who represented the man who settled with Maguire and Dupre 14 years ago, said the complaint filed last week was the first time he heard about an allegation of abuse against Maguire, whose tenure as head of the diocese was book-ended by bishops who are credibly accused. But he “wouldn’t find it surprising, given all the dots I was connecting.”
Anne Barrett Doyle, of the group Bishop Accountability, said it’s not unusual for her to hear new names of priests accused of sexual abuse.
“We learn about new allegations all the time,” she said.
Bishop Accountability, of Waltham, collects information about bishops’ involvement in the clergy abuse crisis.
Barrett Doyle described the Springfield diocese as a “scarred diocese” that’s reluctant to release information about accused priests; she said allegations against Weldon that were subject to an independent investigation in 2020 were some of the worst she’s seen.
“Part of the reckoning that (the) Springfield diocese was morally obligated to do is to examine whether some of its other bishops may have been abusers,” Barrett Doyle said.
By Daniel Jackson | djackson@repub.com