WORCESTER (MA)
The Boston Globe [Boston, MA]
October 13, 2026
By Kevin Cullen
Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester appears to have slept through the last quarter-century.
I have an embarrassing confession: I kind of, sort of, miss Tom Tobin.
He made good copy.
You may remember Tobin. He was the Roman Catholic bishop in Providence whose idea of being a pastoral leader was to ignore survivors of clergy sexual abuse.
He liked to withhold communion from lawmakers who supported abortion rights while handing out the Eucharist to those who support the death penalty like they were Nilla Wafers.
In fairness, he had an affliction. It’s called tone deafness.
After two decades of exposes about priests raping children, including some extraordinary reporting by the Globe Spotlight Team, showing that bishops like Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston protected and enabled abusive priests, Tobin took to Twitter in 2019 to remind his followers they shouldn’t attend gay Pride events, lest they be seen as giving aid and comfort to a lifestyle the Church disavows. He said such events are especially harmful to children.
Tobin’s Twitter warning was particularly galling, not just because the Catholic Church as an institution presided over the biggest coverup of sexual abuse of children in history, but because as a bishop he actively participated in that coverup, refusing to turn over records to victims and using legal maneuvering to deny them justice.
Alas, Bishop Tobin retired three years ago, his relevance faded, like the annual aspirations of his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers.
But while we no longer have Bishop Tobin around to remind us that there are some slow learners leading the Catholic Church, Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester has picked up the mantle.
You may also remember Bishop McManus. A few years ago, he got his vestments in a twist because a Jesuit school in Worcester was flying flags in support of Black Lives Matter and gay Pride. After school officials refused his order to remove the flags, he revoked the school’s Catholic status. Before that, he similarly threatened the College of the Holy Cross over its support of transgender students, skipping a commencement to underscore his disgust.
Whenever you hear a self-righteous bishop going on and on about the evil of homosexuality or any other sort of difference, it’s a tactic called deflection.
Which brings us to the main point here, the type of behavior that really shows how Bishop McManus is simply Bishop Tobin in a different mitre.
Last week, the Globe’s intrepid Mike Damiano followed in the footsteps of the Spotlight Team, digging up court records to show how McManus was following in the footsteps of Bernie Law, trying to transfer a priest who was credibly accused of an inappropriate relationship with a girl rather than turning him over to the appropriate authorities five years ago.
McManus’ plan to keep things in-house and avoid scandal was thwarted by a diocesan social worker who judged the allegations so disturbing that she called the state Department of Children and Families.
It should come as no surprise that of the four Massachusetts dioceses, Worcester is the only one that refuses to disclose the names of all the priests in the diocese who had been credibly accused of abusing children.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell made a point of highlighting Worcester’s outlier status last week when she released a report that found more than 270 Catholic clerics sexually abused nearly 1,000 children over several decades in the dioceses of Worcester, Springfield and Fall River.
Terence McKiernan and the good folks at BishopAccountability.org convened a news conference in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Worcester on Monday, to remind us that what McManus is doing is in clear violation of the previous promises by the Church to disclose reported abuse and report it to the civil authorities.
As much as I admire and respect the folks at BishopAccountability and other dogged advocates who have kept the spotlight on bishops like McManus, the term “bishop accountability” is right up there with “jumbo shrimp” and “government efficiency” when it comes to oxymorons.
Bishops like McManus are not held accountable by the Church. They are not punished when they fail to uphold their responsibilities as pastors. Instead, they are rewarded for trying to keep scandal under wraps. They are rewarded for protecting the institution instead of the individual. They are rewarded for responding legalistically rather than pastorally.
Two words: Bernie Law.
When Pope Leo hopefully recovers from his surgery, he would be well advised to buy McManus a plane ticket to Rome and give him a good talking to.
But that probably won’t happen.
Through a spokesman, Bishop McManus said he wasn’t available for an interview.
There are great priests out there, working with the poor and the vulnerable every day. In Boston alone, you don’t have to look any further than Father John Unni, who welcomes to St. Cecilia’s in the Back Bay the same kind of gay people McManus scorns, or Father Jack Ahern, who ministers to some of the poorest people in Dorchester and beyond, or the great Father Doc Conway, who took the time to learn Portuguese so he could be a good pastor to Boston’s Cape Verdean kids.
Those guys took the time to actually read what Jesus said and decided to live by those words every day. We are a better community because of them.
Bishops?
Bishops are company men. They protect the company and the brand, at all costs.
That’s what Law did in Boston. It’s what Tobin did in Providence. It’s what McManus is doing in Worcester.
And it’s why, more than 20 years after all this rot was exposed beyond any reasonable doubt, so many people left not the faith but the Church, and aren’t coming back any time soon.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.