A Milwaukee man stood on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Thursday to talk about how that city’s archbishop, Timothy M. Dolan, had dealt with the sexual abuse scandal during his six-year tenure.And his assessment of Archbishop Dolan, who has been chosen to lead New York’s Catholics, was considerably cooler than the reception the gregarious prelate received two weeks ago at the same spot.
“We want him to succeed in New York,” said the man, Peter Isely.
“But you can’t do that with a slap on the back, an off-you-go, and a joke.”
He and five others who said they had been sexually abused by Catholic priests huddled in the cold holding posters with children’s photos and slogans like “Children Must Have a Voice.”
Mr. Isely, the Midwestern director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said that Archbishop Dolan was loved in Milwaukee, but that after first meeting with victims, he largely dismissed their attempts to bring members of the clergy to justice.
Jerry Topczewski, Archbishop Dolan’s chief of staff, said that the archbishop had dealt decisively with the problem, and that there were now no priests working in Milwaukee with substantiated allegations against them.
The protesters said Thursday that the New York Archdiocese had not responded strongly enough to allegations of sex abuse under its current leader, Cardinal Edward M. Egan.
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability, a group in Waltham, Mass., that has documented abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, spoke skeptically of New York’s “unique success in suppressing the crisis.”
In 2004, she said, Cardinal Egan reported that only 1.3 percent of priests in New York had been accused of sexual abuse, compared with 7 percent in Boston, 7.6 percent in Philadelphia, and an average of 4.9 percent nationwide.
“There’s no reason to think an archdiocese as big as New York would be comparatively pristine,” said Ms. Doyle, who joined the others at the cathedral.
Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the archdiocese, said he could not explain the low number. “We reviewed every file of every priest for more than 50 years, and only about 1 percent were found to have committed abuse,” he said.
“I don’t know if they were better trained or better supervised, but the numbers that we reported were the complete and accurate count.”
In Milwaukee, Mr. Isely said, Archbishop Dolan has allowed three abusive priests to continue presenting themselves as clerics in good standing, failed to report admissions of rape by a nun and a priest to the police, and has not publicly released files on 71 clergy accused of abusing minors.
“We have released files to civil authorities,” Mr. Topczewski said. “What we have not done is released documents to media, advocacy groups and plaintiffs’ attorneys.”
He said the archdiocese had listed the names of abusive priests on its Web site.
Mr. Isely said he hoped Archbishop Dolan would be held to higher standards in New York. “New Yorkers have a way of getting to the bottom of things,” he said. “We are absolutely counting on that — for you to succeed where we have failed.”+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
(Source: NYT)