A pair of priests who have been accused of molestation have since disappeared from the San Francisco Archdiocese’s list of priests in good standing.
Attorneys representing people accusing the clergy of sexual abuse when they were children say they believe the priests were quietly removed from ministry in response to the allegations against them.
“I think they’re feeling heat,” said Jennifer Stein, an attorney representing one of the alleged victims who filed a lawsuit in 2022 accusing Rev. Lawrence J. Finegan of sexual abuse. “They’re feeling the pressure of having perpetrators on their good standing list with known allegations that have been public, and publicly available, for years, and in this case, for decades.”
Stein’s client, Sandra Oldfield, notified the archdiocese of the allegation around 1990, she said. She went to the police in 2002.
But Finegan’s name was on a list called “Priests and Deacons with Faculties (approved for ministry)” the archdiocese maintains until as recently as last year. At some point after May 21, it was removed.
Attorneys said they believed the archdiocese removed Finegan from ministry at least in part because of Oldfield’s allegation.
Oldfield alleges Finegan sexually abused her over a period of eight years, beginning in the early 1980s when she was a teenager.
Her 2022 lawsuit was brought under state legislation that allowed adult survivors to sue for alleged childhood sexual abuse within a three-year window, no matter how much time had passed.
Over the summer, Stein said, she worked to coordinate an interview between Oldfield and archdiocese attorney Paul Gaspari about what had happened.
“When we discovered that he was still in ministry and listed on the good standing list, (we) made an effort to undertake action to have that status changed,” Stein said.
In October, the archdiocese informed Stein that Finegan had been removed from ministry, she said.
“We were not provided a date of his removal or the reason or basis more specifically,” Stein said.
Gaspari did not respond to requests for comment.
The name of another priest, Daniel E. Carter, also disappeared from the list of clergy in good standing at some point after Feb. 16, 2023, according to a review of recent versions of the list.
Carter faces accusations of molestation in six separate lawsuits filed in 2022.
A spokesperson for the archdiocese reiterated the church’s protocols for responding to sexual abuse allegations in response to an inquiry about the August interview with Oldfield. The archdiocese’s response did not address the case and did not say why Finegan was removed from the list. A follow-up email asking about Carter’s disappearance from the list received no response.
Attempts to reach Carter and Finegan for comment were unsuccessful.
The unexplained removal of the priests’ names from the list of priests approved for ministry comes amid calls for the San Francisco Archdiocese to release a definitive account of its clergy who have been credibly accused of abuse.
To date, the San Francisco Archdiocese is the only diocese in California that has not released such a list, despite Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone acknowledging in 2023 that it has one.
Instead, the archdiocese publishes a list online of priests with the names of clergy who have faculties to minister in the archdiocese. The list is periodically updated and reposted to its website.
“Those with questions about a priest or deacon can refer to this list,” said archdiocese spokesperson Peter Marlow, who called the approach “more responsible.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney, Jeff Anderson, said it allows the San Francisco Archdiocese to hide the identities of priests who pose an ongoing danger to the public.
“This archbishop has been grossly negligent, grossly reckless, grossly indifferent and grossly deceptive and devious in not disclosing what he and they know about dangerous offenders in ministry,” Anderson said.
Anderson’s firm plans to demand a list of priests credibly accused of abuse at a Monday press conference in front of San Francisco’s Saint Mary’s Cathedral. He is also announcing the filing of formal complaints to the Vatican against Archbishop Cordileone.
The lawsuits naming Finegan and Carter are among hundreds filed by individuals alleging sexual abuse by clergy or others associated with the Archdiocese under a 2019 state law, Assembly Bill 218, or the California Child Victims Act.
The law waived all time limits for abuse claims from 2020 through 2022, and it permanently extended age limits to sue for childhood molestation — from age 26 to 40 years old or within five years after the discovery of the abuse.
The archdiocese sought Chapter 11 protection in federal bankruptcy court in August 2023 in the face of more than 500 such claims. The proceedings effectively froze all the cases filed against the San Francisco Archdiocese, its institutions and clergy.
Accusers of Finegan and Carter said they reported the abuse to church officials decades ago.
Danielle Lacampagne alleges Carter fondled her in the mid to late 1970s when he was at her family’s home for a dinner party, and her parents were in the next room. She was eight or nine years old at the time.
Lacampagne said she reported the abuse to the archdiocese and to San Francisco police in 2002.
Carter was temporarily placed on administrative leave but eventually returned to ministry after the archdiocese’s internal process found the allegation to be not sustained, according to a letter signed by then-Archbishop William Levada that Lacampagne provided.
Archdiocese directories list Carter as a pastor at parishes, including St. Paul of the Shipwreck Parish and Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in San Francisco, as well as a member of the archbishop’s Presbyterian Council in 2021
In 2022, six people filed new lawsuits accusing Carter of molestation.
Lacampagne called the archdiocese’s decision to keep Carter in ministry after she reported the alleged abuse “absurd.”
“Here you have somebody like me who came forward in 2002, and all those years he was just in ministry,” Lacampagne said. “That’s exactly why you need a list of people accused.”
In an interview, Oldfield explained how she met Finegan, who organized a youth group at her high school, around the age of 15 or 16.
Oldfield said she was lonely and looked to Finegan for help. The adult priest began a sexual relationship with her that lasted several years, she said.
“I was not in this from a position of strength,” Oldfield said. “I was in it from a position of need.”
In 2002, she filed a police report with the Fairfax Police Department and police organized a pretext call between Oldfield and Finegan, she said.
“He definitely admitted to the fact that he had been seeing me for a long time,” Oldfield said, “certainly before I was an adult.”
Official Catholic church records show Finegan retired around 2012.
In August, when Oldfield spoke with attorney Gaspari, she said it was the first time she had an opportunity to tell her story to the Catholic church.
She called the experience unsettling but slightly empowering.
“It made me feel that things had changed a little bit for me,” she said.