CHICAGO (IL)
National Catholic Reporter
Norberg Maday
Daniel J. McCormack
Joseph Fitzharris
Brian Roewe | Jan. 23, 2014
When Cardinal Francis George wrote to Chicago Catholics Jan. 12 ahead of the public release of more than 6,000 pages of documents detailing abuse allegations against and procedures related to 30 priests, he warned them to brace themselves.
“The response [by the Chicago archdiocese to abuse allegations], in retrospect, was not always adequate to all the facts,” George wrote. “But a mistake is not a cover up.”
More than a decade earlier, the cardinal had penned another letter addressing what he perceived to be a mistake at the time: the lengthy prison sentence of Fr. Norbert Maday.
George wrote Jan. 12, 2000, to Maday, who was entering the sixth year of his 20-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting minors. “The very calling to mind of Isaiah’s words on the Year of Jubilee echo my prayer for ‘the release of prisoners.’ As you know, Father Dan Coughlin and the lawyers have something under way. I pray these efforts will bear fruit.”
The letter represents one of the 6,000-plus pages of priest files made public Jan. 21, part of a 2008 settlement with alleged abuse victims. The documents open the personnel files on 30 priests with credible accusations of sexually abusing children; the archdiocese lists on its website another 35 priests whose files remain sealed. Fourteen of the 30 have died.
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