The Archdiocese of Chicago has agreed to pay $3.15 million to settle
the latest in a series of lawsuits stemming from sexual abuse by the
laicized priest Daniel McCormack.The archdiocese has now committed to pay over $10 million to victims of McCormack.
In separate lawsuits, these victims have demonstrated that church officials had evidence that McCormack could be a threat to young people as far back as 1994 — before he was ordained by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin — but allowed him to continue in ministry until 2006.
McCormack was jailed in 2007 after pleading guilty to several counts of sexual abuse.
When he became eligible for parole in 2009, prosecutors invoked an Illinois law that allowed them to keep him under confinement, saying that he remained an imminent threat.
He was laicized in 2007.