(ITALY)
Women's Agenda [Brookvale, NSW, Australia]
May 12, 2025
By Lucia Osborne-Crowley
This week, the world’s cardinals elected the first ever American pope – Robert Prevost, a 69-year-old Chicagoan who will be known by the papal name Leo XIV. He has been, it seems, lauded the world over in recent days. The Guardian called him “moderate” and “good humoured”. People in his Diocese referred to him as a “hard-working leader”. Another profile referred to him as a “deft leader and administrator”.
But what these articles don’t mention – what nobody, somehow, seems to be mentioning, is that Prevost is allegedly implicated in one of the greatest and, by now, most well documented and sprawling crimes in modern history – the Catholic Church’s cover up of the sexual abuse of children.
In Chicago in 1999, as provincial of the Augustinians, Prevost oversaw a priest named Father James Ray – who, by the year 2000, had been accused of abusing minors over the course of nine years, beginning in 1991. Prevost allowed the priest to reside at the Augustinians’ St. John Stone Friary in Chicago in 2000, despite its proximity to a Catholic elementary school.
Three victims reported Prevost to authorities in 2022 after Prevost allegedly failed to investigate James Ray, failed to pass on information about his alleged abuse to Rome, and allowed him to continue giving mass – this is, again, all on top of allowing him to live near children.
Activist group Survivors Network for Those Abused By Priests, or SNAP, made a complaint against Prevost on March 25, 2025 – just days after the death of Pope Francis and shortly before the beginning of the conclave.
“Cardinal Prevost was aware of the danger that Ray posed to minors when he gave approval,” SNAP wrote in its complaint against Prevost. “Nonetheless, Ray was permitted to live at the Priory in the vicinity of an elementary school without informing the administration of the school.”
“By doing so, Cardinal Prevost endangered the safety of the children attending St. Thomas the Apostle.”
The complaint says there were at least 13 victims who came forward against Father James Ray. Records released by the Archdiocese of Chicago show the diocese was made aware of allegations as early as 1990. Restrictions were placed on Ray, including that he not be alone with minors, the complaint says.
It was with these restrictions in place that he sought permission from Prevost to live near the Catholic school, and Prevost agreed.
“The Archdiocese of Chicago had already placed restrictions on Ray being in the company of minors for nine years prior to his residence at St. John Stone Priory and communicated these when seeking approval from the Provincial, Robert Prevost,” SNAP said in its complaint.
In an open letter to the new pope, SNAP urged Prevost to stop the Catholic Church’s cover up of abuse
“We were once the children of the church,” SNAP wrote. “The sex offender in the collar commits two crimes: one against the body, and one against the voice. The grand pageantry around your election reminds us: survivors do not carry the same weight in this world as you do.”
“Will the children and the vulnerable of his church have to endure a fourth pope that will betray them and all the innocent entrusted to his care?” SNAP asked. “Or will you be the first pope to end this scourge and heal the open wounds left by the Catholic Church’s long history of sexual violence?”
As a survivor of child sexual abuse myself, what I want to know is this: how is it possible that we still live in a world that elects – to one of the most powerful offices on earth – a person accused of knowingly allowing a priest who abused minors for almost a decade to continue giving mass, to continue in his role and to live in the vicinity of children? As SNAP said, Prevost knew he was endangering children when he actively allowed someone with multiple allegations of child abuse against him – and restrictions placed on his access to children – to have, well, access to children.
Please – with Prevost in the Papacy and a man found liable of sexual abuse by a jury of his peers sitting in the White House – tell me again how allegations of involvement in the commission or cover-up of sexual abuse can ruin a man’s life?
Personally, I feel queasy observing the world laud the new pope without barely a mention of the allegations that he covered up child abuse. I feel sick thinking about how those children – now adults – must feel watching this. The children, now adults, abused by Father James Ray, under the purview of the now-leader of the Catholic Church. They deserve so much better than this.
I – perhaps naively – thought we had come further than this. I hope, at the very least, to start a conversation about how this man has had not to face questions about his actions, apologise to the (at least) 13 victims of Father James Ray, and do everything in his power to eliminate from the institution every single priest accused of abuse. What I’d actually prefer, though, is that a person accused of covering up abuse could never be eligible for, let alone elected to, such a powerful position in the first place.