WORCESTER (MA)
The Boston Globe [Boston, MA]
October 12, 2026
By Sean Cotter
See images of this article [1, 2] as it appeared in the hardcopy Boston Globe on 10/13/2026.
WORCESTER — A longtime organization that has fought against and brought awareness to sexual abuse by priests is calling on the Catholic church to use a recently created mechanism to investigate the Worcester diocese’s handling of a recently unearthed case.
This case, reported on last week by The Boston Globe based on sealed court documents, is a sign to Terence McKiernan of the Waltham-based Bishop Accountability that not enough has changed in the two-plus decades since a Globe Spotlight series brought about a massive reckoning for the church’s handling of abuse by priests.
The most recent Globe story referred to the Worcester diocese’s plan in 2021 to transfer a priest to another church after a teenager first raised complaints of inappropriate behavior involving the priest.
“The way they did it in the past persists,” McKiernan told reporters as he stood Monday in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Worcester. “It’s still the reflex to do it that way, and my point is also that it’s a harmful reflex because this poor girl continued to be abused while it was happening, and the family was being preyed upon.”
McKiernan filed what’s called a “vos estis” complaint on Monday, asking church authorities to probe the actions of Bishop Robert Joseph McManus after the head of the Worcester diocese received complaints of misconduct against the Warren priest, the Rev. Alan Martineau, in 2021.
The name of the complaint mechanism comes from the Latin phase “vos estis lux mundi,” meaning “you are the light of the world.” That’s the title of a process created in 2019 under then-pope Francis for reporting sexual abuse by priests and, as it’s being used here, allegations that a bishop mishandled a complaint in the diocese he runs.
It’s not entirely clear what will happen next. McKiernan said his hope would be that church authorities would investigate and release a public accounting of what happened, but he also said he wasn’t optimistic the church would take action. He views the vos estis process itself as unaccountable, even though it was set up for such purposes.
“It’s a black box,” he said. Still, he wanted to make a public push for accountability, as pressure is, perhaps, the only way further investigation will happen, he said.
On Monday, the diocese referred to previous comments that the initial complaints about Martineau were “not sexual in nature,” but rather “about boundaries and poor judgment.” Once allegations about sexual abuse were made, the diocese said, it took appropriate action.
The Boston archdiocese also did not respond to a request for comment; the Boston archbishop, Cardinal Richard Henning, does not directly oversee the surrounding dioceses such as Worcester, but his office can investigate claims against the other dioceses’ bishops under the vos estis process.
Two and a half decades ago, Boston was rocked by the revelations through the Spotlight series that not only was abuse by priests widespread, but that the church institutionally had sought to cover it up. Reverberations echoed around the world, with similar issues and practices found across states, countries, and continents.
In the years since, scrutiny on the church’s handling of abuse claims has ebbed and flowed. It returned to the headlines last month when the Massachusetts attorney general’s office announced the results of a seven-year-long investigation into the dioceses of Fall River, Springfield, and Worcester, including evidence that more than 270 Catholic clerics abused nearly 1,000 children over several decades all over the state.
Church leaders enabled the abuse by shielding predators and concealing allegations over half a century and across a succession of bishops, the report found.
Many of the allegations were years to decades old, far beyond the statute of limitations for criminal charges, Attorney General Andrea Campbell has said. In fact, it appears only a single set of charges came in connection with her office’s investigation: those against Martineau, originally in 2023 for indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or older.
Records obtained by the Globe for an investigation published last week show Martineau accepted a deal in September 2025 in which he agreed that sufficient facts existed to convict him of simple assault and battery, though he did not plead guilty to that crime. The court gave him a year of probation and ordered him not to contact the victim, but then his probation was ended early in June this year. Following that, his case was dismissed and the documents impounded.
The diocese has said Martineau can no longer present himself as a priest, although he has petitioned to be reinstated, Martineau’s lawyer has said. The lawyer has called the case against the former priest very weak. Martineau was not available for comment.
Court documents lay out an escalating series of complaints against Martineau.
In 2021, a young parishioner in the rural middle of the state told a visiting priest that Martineau had cultivated a special relationship with her and then inappropriately touched her. Beginning in 2019, the girl said, Martineau repeatedly hugged, kissed, and touched her. Martineau also exchanged tens of thousands of text messages with the girl, investigators later found.
McManus, according to the documents, was notified multiple times of questionable behavior, and sought to do what church leaders before him had done so often: transfer Martineau to another parish where he would receive the “tutelage” of an older priest.
But before that transfer occurred, a social worker with the diocese decided the allegations had become so serious that they must be reported to the state, so she called the Department of Children and Families.
Records state that nearly five months elapsed between a meeting when McManus was informed of the initial allegations and when the diocese contacted authorities. In those intervening months, increasingly serious allegations about Martineau’s conduct emerged, including an alleged campaign of retaliation against the victim’s family and details about the approximately 80,000 text messages the priest exchanged with the underage girl.
“That five months is basically a violation of the church policy,” said McKiernan, the activist. “He should have been pulled under zero tolerance . . . He should have been pulled out administrative right then and there.”
Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter.