NEWARK (NJ)
Politico [Arlington VA]
April 3, 2026
By Dustin Racioppi
It’s been nearly 14 months since Cardinal Joseph Tobin announced a “comprehensive third-party review” of a 2019 investigation into sexual abuse at Seton Hall University that implicated its new president.
It’s essentially an investigation of an investigation.
But this one is taking longer than the original. The Archdiocese of Newark, to which Seton Hall belongs and which Tobin oversees, won’t say what’s going on. It all bothers Sen. Joseph Vitale, the chair of the upper chamber’s health committee who has focused heavily on sexual abuse and been one of the more vocal critics of Seton Hall.
“If these internal investigations and reports are not made public, I am prepared to request a formal Senate hearing with subpoena power,” he told me. “Hiding suspicions of sex crimes places children and adults at ongoing risk.”
For those who don’t remember, Seton Hall announced an investigation in August 2018 into sexual abuse allegations against then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the longtime archbishop of Newark and Washington, D.C. A year later, in August 2019, the university released a summary that investigators found decades of sexual harassment and a “culture of fear and intimidation” created by McCarrick, but the details were kept from the public.
That was until POLITICO reported in late 2024 that Seton Hall hired its new president, Monsignor Joseph Reilly, even though the 2019 investigation found that he knew of sexual abuse allegations on campus and did not properly report them (he was not accused of abuse). Reilly’s promotion to the presidency in 2024 came despite recommendations from 2019 that he be removed from school boards and the leadership position he held at the time. Reilly left the Board of Trustees and, in 2022, stepped down as a seminary dean to take a sabbatical.
Reilly was among about a dozen Seton Hall priests named in the 2019 report, but those other names and details have not been made public.
The revelations about Reilly and the outcry from political leaders — including then-Rep. Mikie Sherrill — prompted Tobin to hire the law firm Ropes & Gray in February 2025 to find out what happened. He said investigators would have “the full cooperation” of the university and its governing board and that there would be no restrictions on “exploring any relevant facts or avenue of investigation.”
But, as we’ve reported, Reilly’s predecessor as president, Joseph Nyre, has been effectively blocked twice from speaking to investigators. In other words, the person who led the school at the time of the McCarrick investigation’s findings and recommendations has not yet given details of what he knows.
Notably, Tobin’s announcement of the Ropes & Gray investigation gave no timetable for when it must be complete. The archdiocese did not provide POLITICO with an update on the investigation and a Seton Hall spokesperson deferred to the archdiocese.
Vitale said it’s “disturbing and frustrating” that the archdiocese hasn’t revealed anything yet but added, “I don’t believe that that’s unintentional.”
“You can’t run out the clock on this,” Vitale said. “And maybe someone’s hoping that people lose interest. But they shouldn’t, because this is potentially really damaging — not only to the university but to the diocese.”
About The Author: Dustin Racioppi
Dustin Racioppi is the New Jersey editor for POLITICO.He was most recently the politics and government editor for the USA TODAY Network, overseeing coverage in six states. Before that he was a longtime Statehouse reporter in New Jersey, first for the Asbury Park Press and then for The Record. He’s also worked at newspapers in Connecticut and Colorado. At The Record, his reporting of political patronage in the Murphy administration led to the resignation of the CEO of the state Schools Development Authority and spurred reforms at that agency, and his coverage of a politically connected lottery privatization deal helped save taxpayers up to $100 million after the state amended its contract. He won the inaugural David Carr Reporter of the Year award from the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists in 2020.
Before his career in journalism, Dustin served on a submarine in the U.S. Navy during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. He is a native of the Jersey Shore, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.