UNITED STATES
Boston Globe
[See other McGuire documents.]
April 15, 2012|By Michael Rezendes
The Rev. Bradley M. Schaeffer had been the leader of the Jesuits in the Chicago area for two years when an anguished father wrote to him with disturbing news about one of his most famous priests.
Donald J. McGuire, a globe-trotting spiritual retreat leader who counted Mother Teresa among his fans, had been taking showers and looking at pornography with the man’s son, and the son had been giving McGuire frequent massages when the two traveled together.
“Other acts of a serious nature may have taken place,’’ warned the boy’s father in the May 1993 letter, adding that a second teen may have been victimized as well.
Schaeffer learned of at least two more complaints about McGuire’s behavior with boys during his six years in Chicago. But Schaeffer, now a member of the Boston College board of trustees and the leader of a study center, housed on the BC campus, for future Jesuit priests, never investigated nor contacted police. Instead, he sent his wayward priest for treatment of a sexual disorder – treatment that Schaeffer acknowledged did not go well.
“What is clear is that the basics are not going to change here,’’ Schaeffer wrote, after a 1994 meeting with McGuire after his return from more than six months of treatment. “It could be that there is an extremely rough time ahead.’’
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