Cardinal Robert Prevost appears on the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica after being chosen the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, choosing the name of Pope Leo XIV, at the Vatican, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (Andrew Medichini/Associated Press)
Survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests are calling on Pope Leo XIV to institute a zero-tolerance policy while demanding an investigation into his handling of prior misconduct allegations.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which has 25,000 members worldwide, released a statement Thursday acknowledging the “gravity of the role” Cardinal Robert Prevost assumed as the first American pope in the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history.
“With the title comes a grave reckoning,” the group, known as SNAP, said in a statement.
Hours earlier, prior to the 69-year-old Prevost being elected to lead roughly 1.4 billion Catholics around the world, SNAP released a 6-page open letter calling on the new pontiff to instill a “truly universal zero tolerance law for sexual abuse and cover-up” by clergy.
“Now that he’s the pope, we’re gravely concerned,” SNAP spokesperson Sarah Pearson told Newsweek. “These are serious allegations by three women and their complaints deserve to be investigated.”
Handling of Past Cases
Those allegations, according to Pearson, were primarily about Pope Leo XIV’s dealings with Father James Ray, a priest accused of abusing minors. Nearly a decade later, Ray’s ministry had been allowed to move to the Augustinians’ St. John Stone Friary in Chicago, despite the building being near a Catholic elementary school, the Chicago-Sun Timesreported in 2021. Records obtained by the paper show that church officials approved the transfer, noting there was “no school in the immediate area.”
SNAP accused Prevost of “endanger[ing]” the safety of the children at the school by approving the transfer.
The Vatican has reportedly denied Prevost authorized Ray’s arrangements for the friary. Newsweek reached out to the Vatican’s press office for comment on SNAP’s letter but did not immediately receive a response.
In 2022, when Prevost served as bishop of Chiclayo in Peru, three victims reported alleged abuse to civil authorities following no movement in the canonical case they filed with the diocese. The victims claim Prevost failed to open an investigation and sent inadequate information to Rome, while the diocese allowed the priest to continue delivering mass, SNAP claims.
“He had a large amount of responsibility and oversight,” Pearson said of Prevost, who worked in Peru until 2023 when Pope Francis brought him to Rome.
The Vatican has reportedly denied any wrongdoing by Prevost in the Peruvian case. Pearson said SNAP wants a full investigation by the Vatican into both matters involving Prevost’s alleged faulty oversight.
“The only way this crisis is going to end is if the Vatican officials institute a zero-tolerance policy,” Pearson said. “And only Pope Leo XIV can do that.”
SNAP filed a complaint with Vatican officials against Prevost in March — before the death of Pope Francis — and have not heard back as of Thursday, Pearson said.
“As the Ordinary of the Diocese of Chiclayo, there is serious reason to believe that Cardinal Prevost did not follow the procedures established by the Holy See for carrying out investigations following reports of abuse,” reads the letter signed by SNAP officials, including Pearson, and viewed by Newsweek.
“There is evidence that the accused priests were not suspended from public ministry following a report of abuse and during the period of the purported preliminary investigation.”
SNAP claims testimony from the three alleged female victims was not gathered by church officials and that Prevost didn’t notify civil authorities of the allegations or offer psychological support or assistance.
The allegations by the women indicate the Diocese of Chiclayo didn’t investigate the abuse claims and misrepresented their testimony under Prevost’s leadership, ultimately preventing an accurate assessment of the case, SNAP claims.
“Thus, we request Vatican officials conduct a thorough investigation of the situation, with the results of the investigation being made public,” the group’s March 25 letter reads. “Should an independent special investigator be appointed to examine Prevost’s conduct, we request to be notified of this investigator’s identity and qualifications.”
SNAP is now calling on Pope Leo to take “decisive action” within his first 100 days as pontiff, including a zero-tolerance law pertaining to sexual abuse and a reparations fund supported by church assets.
“You can end the abuse crisis — the only question is, will you?” SNAP’s statement concluded.
Washington State Standard, Jerry Cornfield, May 2, 2025
Gov. Bob Ferguson, at podium, goes to shake hands with state Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, at the signing of a bill to make clergy mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect, on May 2, 2025 in Olympia. At center is Mary Dispenza, a founding member of the Catholic Accountability Project. (Jerry Cornfield/Washington State Standard)
Religious leaders in Washington will be required to report child abuse or neglect, even when it is disclosed in confession, under a new law signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson on Friday.
“Protecting our kids, first, is the most important thing. This bill protects Washingtonians from abuse and harm,” Ferguson said, noting Washington is one of five states in which clergy are not currently mandated reporters.
It took Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, three years to get the bill to the governor’s desk. Making sure disclosures during confidential conversations between a penitent and religious leader were not exempt was critical, she said.
“You never put somebody’s conscience above the protection of a child,” she said.
Senate Bill 5375 passed by margins of 64-31 in the House and 28-20 in the Senate. It takes effect July 27.
Clergy would join school personnel, nurses, social service counselors, psychologists, and many others with a duty to report when they have “reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect.”
A “member of the clergy” is defined in the legislation to cover any regularly licensed, accredited, or ordained minister, priest, rabbi, imam, elder, or similarly positioned religious or spiritual leader.
While disclosures in confession or other religious rites where the clergy member is bound to confidentiality are not exempt, religious leaders will retain their privilege to not be compelled to testify in related court cases or criminal proceedings.
More than half the states make clergy mandatory reporters and most exempt what is heard in a confessional. Washington will join several states, including New Hampshire and West Virginia where such conversations are not exempt.
“It says the church is not above the law, especially when it comes to protecting children,” said Mary Dispenza, a founding member of the Catholic Accountability Project and member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “We know children will be safer as a result of passing this law.”
Removing the confessional privilege proved the most divisive provision in legislative debates.
It’s the chief reason the Washington State Catholic Conference opposed the legislation. They said it would force priests to break the seal of confession, considered a sacred promise to never reveal any of the information disclosed.
Most Republican lawmakers were opposed to including the confessional, too. They argued in hearings and floor debates that abusers would do more harm because they would no longer be able to freely confide and seek forgiveness.
Keeping the confessional in the bill did not give Ferguson pause.
“Not for me,” he said. As a Catholic, “I’m very familiar with it. Been to confession, myself. I felt this was important legislation for protecting kids.”
Frame has said her push for the legislation began after reading an InvestigateWest account of a lawsuit alleging a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation in Spokane covered up abuse of children by an elder.
Momentum grew as Catholic and Jehovah’s Witness survivors shared their stories with lawmakers and argued for including the confessions, she said.
“This is going to protect children in other religious communities, especially Jehovah’s Witnesses,” said Marino Hardin of Seattle, who worked to pass the law on behalf of abuse victims. “I believe that a lot more children will not fall through the cracks.”
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who was accused of covering up cases of abuse as archbishop of Los Angeles, will have an official role in the ceremonies around Francis’ funeral.
The New York Times, Jonathan Wolfe, April 25, 2025
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, covered up cases of sexual abuse by priests. (Max Rossi/Reuters)
An American cardinal who was accused of covering up cases of sexual abuse by priests and was later stripped of some duties, is set to play an official role in the ceremonies surrounding Pope Francis’ funeral.
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, will participate in the closing of the pope’s casket at St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday evening and in his burial at the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore on Saturday, according to Vaticanannouncements.
The cardinals taking part were chosen based on seniority, a spokesman for the Vatican, Matteo Bruni, said at a news briefing on Thursday.
Cardinal Mahony, 89, was the archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 until his retirement from the Roman Catholic Church in 2011. In 2013, internal church personnel files released as part of a civil case revealed that Cardinal Mahony had played a role in covering up cases of sexual abuse by priests.
The documents show that Cardinal Mahony and others worked to protect abusive priests from punishment and withhold evidence of sexual abuse from law enforcement agencies. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the United States, also sent priests who had molested children out of state for treatment, in part because therapists in California were legally obligated to report evidence of child abuse to the police, according to the documents.
In 2007, the Los Angeles archdiocese agreed to pay $660 million to settle claims from more than 500 victims, the largest settlement for priest sexual abuse at the time. Last year, the church agreed to pay another $880 million to settle abuse claims from 1,353 people.
Advocates for abuse victims assailed the decision to allow Cardinal Mahony to take part in the papal funeral.
“By having Cardinal Mahony ceremonially close Pope Francis’s casket, the Catholic Church has chosen to let a known enabler of abuse perform one last act of cover-up,” Peter Isely, a founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement.
“Honoring him in this way makes it clear: Nothing has fundamentally changed under Francis’ papacy,” he added.
As archbishop, Cardinal Mahony was one of the most powerful men in the American church, known as a savvy politician, a relatively progressive prelate and a champion of Hispanic immigrants.
When the church files were released, Cardinal Mahony apologized to victims and said he had been naïve about the effectiveness of “treatments” for abusers and the impact of the crimes on those they had harmed.
“Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God’s grace finally helped me to understand,” he wrote on his personal blog after the files were released. “I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility. Rather, I am being called to something deeper — to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many. I was not ready for this challenge.”
Cardinal Mahony’s successor, Archbishop José H. Gomez, disciplined him, a highly unusual move for the church at the time. The archdiocese said that Cardinal Mahony had been stripped of his official duties and would no longer speak publicly on behalf of the church, although he was still allowed to celebrate Mass.
Weeks after he was disciplined, when Pope Benedict XVI stepped down, Cardinal Mahony traveled to Rome to take part in the selection of the next pontiff, rebuffing calls from victims’ rights groups to recuse himself from the election. That conclave selected Francis, who as pope pledged “zero tolerance” for sexual abusers in the church and took measures to address the issue, although critics argued he did not go far enough.
In recent years, Cardinal Mahony has spoken out on political issues. He denounced President Trump’s plan for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and criticized efforts within the church to deny communion to Catholic lawmakers who support abortion rights.
Adrian Alarcon, a spokesman for the archdiocese of Los Angeles, said in an email on Friday that Cardinal Mahony “has always been in good standing” and was “representing the Archdiocese of Los Angeles during this time of mourning for our Catholic community.”
“He is very much taking part in the general congregations, meetings, public masses, and other events that the cardinals are attending this week and in the coming days,” he said.
Cardinal Mahony cannot participate in the election for Francis’ successor, as prelates over the age of 80 are not eligible in the voting.
Pope Francis took steps to address abuse. But cases continue to emerge, especially in Africa and Asia, with the potential to upend future pontificates.
The Washington Post, Chico Harlan, April 24, 2025
Katsumi Takenaka, among those who have gone public as survivors of Catholic clergy sexual abuse, protests Pope Francis’s visit to Japan in 2019. (Yuri Kageyama/AP)
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis had once vowed to eradicate the “evil” of sexual abuse from the Roman Catholic Church. He called bishops to Rome for listening sessions. He drew up new guidelines for handling cases.
Anti-abuse advocates commend Francis for grasping the systemic nature of the problem and meeting empathetically with victims. But they say he struggled to alter the church’s penchant for secrecy and its habit of acting forcefully only when under outside pressure.
What that means, in the aftermath of Francis’s death, is that the next pope will inherit a crisis that is still roiling the Catholic Church.
Even now, the Holy See is receiving a steady 800 cases per year from places such as Poland, Italy, Latin America and Asia, according to Archbishop Charles Scicluna, a member of the Vatican department that oversees the handling of abuse claims.
What that means, in the aftermath of Francis’s death, is that the next pope will inherit a crisis that is still roiling the Catholic Church.
Even now, the Holy See is receiving a steady 800 cases per year from places such as Poland, Italy, Latin America and Asia, according to Archbishop Charles Scicluna, a member of the Vatican department that oversees the handling of abuse claims.
The church, with its meticulous recordkeeping, was aware of rampant clerical sexual abuse well before it exploded into public view in the early 2000s. The first revelations emerged primarily in Western countries with strong prosecution services, independent media and advocacy groups. Now, the nature of the crisis is changing, and new regions are training a spotlight on crimes within the church.
“Now it is different places,” he said. “A culture of disclosure takes time to develop.”
One concern within the church is that any revelations could geographically broaden the church’s credibility problems, which have already driven an exodus of Mass-goers in Western Europe. The church is growing most quickly in Africa and parts of Asia, and even if reckonings don’t happen anytime soon, they lurk as potential risks during future pontificates. The lesson of the past three decades is that clerical abuse is widespread — so long as somebody is looking for it and victims have confidence to come forward.
Shaun Dougherty, an American who is the board president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said that abuse “is the single biggest issue in the church today.”
“They are still more willing to protect their church and themselves than the innocent,” he said.
The issue has altered the course of the last three pontificates.
Pope John Paul II, who led the church when the early evidence came to light, tended to view individual priests as the problem, paying less attention to crimes or cover-ups in the hierarchy. That oversight posthumously bruised his reputation, when it emerged that he had known about and overlooked sexual misconduct claims against Theodore McCarrick, a powerful American cardinal who was defrocked in 2019.
John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, moved more aggressively to punish priests and was the first pope to meet with clerical abuse survivors. But he also faced accusations — levied in a 1,900-page report released a year before his death — that he’d mishandled cases during an earlier point in his career. He expressed “profound shame” to abuse victims but admitted no wrongdoing.
Francis faced abuse-related challenges on many fronts. Conservatives, connecting the scourge to homosexuality in the priesthood, accused the pope of overlooking the root causes. Liberals, particularly in Germany, said the pope wasn’t going far enough in reforming the church. And several of Francis’s international trips, including to Belgium in September, were dominated by feelings of anger and betrayal stemming from the church’s response to abuse.
“It is shameful,” Francis said during that trip. “The church must be ashamed, ask for pardon and try to solve this situation.”
Some critics say that Francis, when not directly confronted with the issue, paid less attention to abuse in his final few years. During a landmark two-year church gathering that ended in 2024, known as a synod, many thorny church issues were discussed. But abuse was not a focus.
“Given that this was the existential crisis to the moral legitimacy to the church around the world, it was a stunning disappointment,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of the watchdog group BishopAccountability.
‘All-out’ battle against abuse
Francis’s most relevant measures to counter abuse came at the midpoint of his pontificate, when global scandals brought pressure to an unprecedented level. In Chile, prosecutors were raiding church offices and accusing church leaders of a cover-up. In Australia, a cardinal was preparing to stand trial on numerous sex-related offenses. And in the United States, accusations about McCarrick were bubbling to the surface — as the pope promised a canonical trial.
They listened to victims and aired proposals about improving oversight.
At the end of the four-day summit, the pope vowed an “all-out battle” against abuse.
He subsequently issued a sweeping new law that aimed to create a better system for fielding and investigating abuse claims. As part of that law, dioceses were required to set up offices for receiving complaints. Priests and nuns were obligated for the first time to report accusations of wrongdoing to religious authorities. And, perhaps most importantly, the measures added a new layer of oversight for bishops, who’d previously been answerable only to the pope — meaning they could operate without much scrutiny. Under the new system, bishops could essentially police their own ranks: If one bishop was accused of abuse or a cover-up, a prelate heading the largest regional dioceses could step in and lead an investigation.
The Vatican also made an example out of McCarrick. He was stripped of the rights of the priesthood, the most significant abuse-related punishment ever given to a onetime cardinal. His rise through the ranks was also subjected to an internal investigation, resulting in a 449-page report that unearthed papal decision-making in searing detail.
Lack of transparency
But the McCarrick report was a one-off.
And abuse experts, as well as Vatican officials, acknowledge that the church still does not operate with transparency or consistency.
A report issued in October by the pope’s abuse commission noted that not all dioceses have created the offices for receiving cases.
Sometimes the church investigates higher-ups according to its rules. But other cases are improvised, without explanation. Experts say it is hard to tell how well the system is working, because the church does not make public information about which bishops are punished and why.
“We need to work on a consistent application of adhering to the law,” said Hans Zollner, a German priest who helped organize Francis’s abuse summit, and who specializes in safeguarding. “This is the main challenge for the church” when it comes to abuse.
When one of Francis’s top-ranking cardinals, Canadian Marc Ouellet, faced accusations of inappropriate touching, the Vatican delegated the investigation to a priest who already knew Ouellet well. When a Nobel-winning bishop from East Timor, Carlos Ximenes Belo, was accused of abusing impoverished children, the Vatican disciplined him. But the restrictions — including a ban on contact with minors — were kept secret until a Dutch news outlet looked into the case.
Victims commonly say they struggle to obtain information about any discipline meted out against their alleged abusers.
Scicluna called that a “fair” criticism.
“If you look at the record of Pope Francis, we are in a better place when it comes to laws and structures,” Scicluna said. “One thing is having laws and structures. Another is how they operate on the ground.”
Demonstrators with the Coalition of Catholics and Survivors hold posters of children who have allegedly been sexually abused by Catholic priests, across the street from where the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are meeting in Dallas, Friday, June 14. 2002. (Charlie Riedel/AP)
While the airwaves have been flooded since Pope Francis’ death on Monday with praise for a transformative and humble leader, the pope’s legacy is a more complicated and troubled one for many focused on the issue of clergy sex abuse.
“My heart goes out to all of those who are deeply affected by [the passing of Pope Francis],” said Myra Russell, a Boston resident.
But for Russell, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse between the ages of 4 and 15 when she lived in Albany, it was hard to hear Pope Francis talking about “world peace” while knowing the inner lives of abuse survivors are anything but peaceful.
“As a survivor, first of all, I can tell you survivors are having a lot of feelings today, lots going on inside them,” said Peter Isely, one of the founders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“This is the third pope in modern times since this issue has become public … thanks to survivors decades ago,” Isely said. “Each one of those popes, including Francis, covered up sex crimes before they became pope. I’m not speculating here. This is demonstrable and proven. Unfortunately, we only found out about that after they became pope.”
That’s why SNAP launched “Conclave Watch,” a database tracking the records of Catholic Cardinals in handling abuse cases, he said.
“We don’t need another pope that’s covered up sex crimes,” he said. “I don’t know how morally the church can survive really if we drag a fourth papacy into this.”
“Francis needed to complete the work that started in Boston. … And he didn’t do that.”
The crisis came to light nationally in 2002, thanks to abuse survivors in the Boston area who shared their stories with the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team.
“It was because the force of what came out in Boston that made the American bishops make a change in church law, which made it prohibited that any priest or cleric that has been known at any time to have sexually abused a child had to be permanently removed from ministry and could never function or practice or present himself as a priest again,” Isely said.
But as pope, Francis never enacted a global change in canon law that prohibits priests from serving in ministry when it’s been proven they are guilty of sexual abuse.
“Francis needed to complete the work that started in Boston. He needed to complete it and make it global, what began in Boston,” Isely said. “And he didn’t do that.”
Father Michael C. McCarthy, SJ, dean of the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry, agreed that Francis should have done more.
“I think probably he himself would say his approach was insufficient,” McCarthy said. “I think it was probably a step forward from his predecessors. But I do think that this is something that the Church continues to wrestle with, as indeed larger society in so many other ways too.”
Pope Francis’ understanding of and response to the crisis evolved significantly over the years, said Stephen Pope, professor of theology at Boston College.
“The clergy sex abuse problem is sort of a tortured issue for Pope Francis in that he was appalled by the behavior of priests, but also by the bishops that covered up the abuse,” Pope said. “And he really wanted to insist on transparency and accountability. He had a great learning curve on this.”
For example, Francis initially refused to believe the accounts of abuse survivors in Chile and accused them of slander in 2018.
“But when there was huge outcry, he went back to Rome and sent a delegate to investigate the accusations of abuse and he discovered that they were indeed true. The result was he went through a process of repentance,” Pope said.
“There’s a tendency with the hierarchy to think these are a few rotten apples. And the pope came to believe that there was a systematic problem within the church and not just in Chile or the U.S. Or Germany, elsewhere, but throughout the world,” Pope said.
Francis founded the first Pontifical Council for the investigation of sex abuse in the church, which was headed by Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley of Boston.
“Some of the members were frustrated that their work got delayed and thwarted to some extent by the bureaucracy of the Vatican,” Pope said. “And were frustrated that the pope couldn’t take control of that Vatican bureaucracy more effectively. The general feeling is that he meant sincerely to change not just the institutional reporting mandate and insisting on accountability for anyone who’s accused of sex abuse, credibly accused, but also to change the culture of the church.”
Asked on Monday about Francis’ record on clergy sex abuse crisis, Archbishop Richard Henning of the Archdiocese of Boston spoke generally about the example the pope set.
“It’s hard to heal the damage that is done by that kind of transgression of human dignity,” Archbishop Henning said.
“So the Holy Father, I think, has a heart for people who are suffering, and he gives us his own witness, the way to respond, which is that we walk with people, we accompany people, right?” Henning said, still speaking of Pope Francis in the present tense.
“So he uses that word throughout his writings, ‘accompaniment.’ He calls us to, without judgment, just be with people, listen to them, try to understand their experience, allow them to express their heart and their suffering and their story,” Henning continued. “And I think … that’s a good witness he gives us and I certainly will try to live that in my own ministry here.”
Now, as Cardinals choose a new pope, abuse survivor Myra Russell said she’s feeling a sense of uncertainty.
“I’m going to try and be optimistic about the future,” she said. “But it’s scary when people I talk to say they don’t really even know that this [abuse] still happens.”
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) held a press conference on Tuesday in front of Seton Hall’s Ward Gate to announce the filing of a formal complaint against Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the Archbishop of Newark and the president of SHU’s Board of Regents and chair of the Board of Trustees, urging a Vatican investigation.
The purpose of the press conference was to “deliver a critical announcement concerning the role of the U.S. Catholic cardinals in the next papal conclave,” according to a SNAP press release.
SNAP announced they have filed formal complaints against several U.S. cardinals, including some who lead Vatican dicasteries responsible for investigating abuse. One of the cardinals named in the complaints is Tobin.
With Tobin holding powerful positions at SHU, part of the reasoning behind his inclusion in the complaint stems from the controversy surrounding university President Msgr. Joseph Reilly.
Reilly was named the university’s 22nd president in April 2024 in a selection process led by the Board of Regents and Board of Trustees, according to SHU’s by-laws. As the president of SHU’s Board of Regents and chair of the Board of Trustees, Tobin formed the search and screen committee that appointed Reilly president. This came after a 2019 report by the law firm Latham & Watkins allegedly found that Reilly was “aware of sexual harassment allegations involving seminarians and did not report such allegations to SHU officials, in violation of the university’s Title IX policies.”
In December 2024, Politico revealed that Reilly allegedly knew about claims of sex abuse at SHU at the hands of now-defrocked Theodore McCarrick. McCarrick was the archbishop of Newark from 1986 to 2000. He died on April 3 at the age of 94.
On March 18, New Jersey Superior Court judge Avion Benjamin ordered SHU to hand over the Latham report; however, it is unclear when Benjamin will receive it and other relevant documents.
The SNAP press conference was held at the Ward Place Gate around 11 a.m. on April 15 and was led by three SNAP representatives: board president Shaun Dougherty, founding member and chair of the Global Policy Working Group Peter Isely, and media and communications team member Sarah Pearson.
“We chose to announce seven new complaints on U.S. cardinals at Seton Hall because of the ongoing catastrophe that only continues because Cardinal Tobin refuses to do the right thing: come clean about what happened, release the report from the 2019 investigation, and make the necessary corrections to ensure what happened in the past can never happen again,” Pearson said.
Pearson also criticized the university’s selection of Reilly as president after a Board of Regents task force, according to Politico, said he should not hold any leadership position on campus.
“[This] is utterly disrespectful to survivors of abuse, and it sends a message to current students that violating Title IX regulations is not a dealbreaker for campus leadership,” Pearson said.
Maria Margiotta, executive director of communications for the Archdiocese of Newark, commented on SNAP’s complaint, referencing a “comprehensive third-party review of the facts” that Cardinal Tobin announced in February.
“Cardinal Tobin commissioned the Ropes & Gray law firm to conduct a third-party review of the facts from the 2019 Latham report about whether or not Monsignor Reilly had any relevant knowledge of former Archbishop McCarrick’s behavior and communicated such information to any and all appropriate personnel at Seton Hall and the Archdiocese of Newark, and if so, by what means and by whom,” Margiotta said.
Margiotta added that Tobin has pledged to publicly release the findings of this review.
According to SNAP’s complaint, Tobin’s actions are an abuse of church power that hurt vulnerable people and caused scandal, which is a violation covered by canon 1378 in Code of Canon Law.
Dougherty, Isely, and Pearson accused Tobin of obstructing both civil and canonical investigations in the Archdiocese of Newark and at SHU (which is a diocesan university) and called for a transparent, Vatican-led inquiry.
Specifically, the complaint said that in 2018, a journalist wrote that Cardinal Tobin told him after taking over as archbishop in Newark that he heard “rumors” about McCarrick and a beach house where he had abused seminarians but never bothered to check them out, saying the story was too “incredulous” to believe. The complaint also claims that the archdiocese instructed Reilly not to cooperate with SHU’s investigation into McCarrick’s conduct on campus.
SNAP issued their complaint on Monday with the Vatican in light of Pope Francis’s Vos estis lux mundi declaration, which allows any person to submit a report concerning clergy sexual misconduct allegations.
The complaint requests that Vatican officials carry out a full investigation and release the findings publicly.
The complaint also references The Setonian’s March article “Legal battle over sex-abuse report intensifies.”
These filings follow last month’s announcement of the Conclave Watch initiative in Rome, which is a “global, survivor-led initiative” launched by SNAP.
According to their website, Conclave Watch “calls on the next conclave to select a pope who has not covered up abuse and who will commit—on the very first day of his papacy—to enacting a binding, universal zero tolerance law.”
Pearson told News 12 New Jersey about SNAP’s mission before the election of the next pope.
“We’re trying to give survivors around the world and in the United States a platform for people to speak out…so we can have these conversations now,” Pearson said. “So we can talk about this before the next pope is elected—before we find out after the fact that that person may have a history of having covered up abuse.”
Tobin is currently scheduled to lead an immigration panel at SHU on April 24, serving as the keynote speaker and mass celebrant.
Pope Francis made his first public appearance in five weeks when he blessed the faithful from his hospital balcony before his discharge on Sunday (Ettore Ferrari/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Six senior cardinals, including two considered strong contenders to be future popes, have been accused by campaigners of covering up sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.
A bombshell dossier of complaints compiled by groups representing survivors of clerical sex abuse has been handed to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state and number two to the Pope.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), along with a survivors’ organisation called Nate’s Mission, allege the six cardinals either enabled or concealed sexual abuse committed by Catholic clergy, and called for the Holy See to immediately launch an investigation.
The Vatican did not respond to a request for comment, nor has it publicly addressed the allegations.
The accused cardinals were named as Peter Erdo, from Hungary, Kevin Farrell, from Ireland, Victor Manuel Fernandez, from Argentina, Mario Grech, from Malta, Robert Francis Prevost, from the US, and Luis Antonio Tagle, from the Philippines.
Cardinals Tagle and Erdo are considered to be strong contenders to succeed the Pope.
Cardinal Tagle, 67, has been dubbed “the Asian Francis” for his good humour and progressive views. Cardinal Erdo, the Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, is, in contrast, regarded as a conservative.
“While sympathy for Pope Francis in his declining health is understandable, we cannot ignore the tragic reality: the cardinals he has empowered include men who have covered up abuse,” said Peter Isely, of Snap. “Now some of these same men are being considered as candidates for the next pope.”
The dossier of alleged cover-ups and mismanagement “marks the first time multiple high-ranking cardinals have been targeted …by co-ordinated, survivor-led action,” the campaigners said.
They acknowledge that the Pope has been through the longest hospitalisation of his 12-year papacy and that his health is fragile.
But they appealed to him to use the time he had left as pontiff to implement a zero-tolerance law for Catholic clergy who abused children and minors.
Under that law, the Church would be obliged to remove known offender priests from their ministries and hold bishops accountable if they are found to have covered up sexual crimes.
“Survivors have done the work that church leaders refuse to do,” said Shaun Dougherty, the president of Snap, which says it has more than 25,000 survivors and supporters in its network.
“We’ve compiled the evidence, followed the Vatican’s procedures, and named the names. If Pope Francis is serious about his ‘zero tolerance’ approach, he would appoint a truly independent investigator and open the abuse archives to that person – as he said he would in 2019.”
Groups vet potential popes
Earlier this week, the campaign groups launched Conclave Watch, a database aimed at thoroughly vetting potential papal candidates – known in Italian as “papabile”, literally “pope-able”.
They hope the dossier will highlight the issue of clerical sex abuse before the next conclave – the secret election in which cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel to choose the next pope.
“If the next pope is serious about ending clergy abuse, we must ensure he hasn’t covered it up, and that he endorses a binding and universal zero-tolerance law,” said Mr Isely.
Pointing out that the only part of the Catholic world that had adopted a zero-tolerance approach was the US, he added: “The United States is just 6 per cent of the Catholic world. So 94 per cent doesn’t have that.”
Doctors have told the Pope that he needs to rest for at least the next two months, throwing doubt on whether he can take part in any Easter events.
“In this moment, he certainly has difficulty speaking, but I am sure he will deliver messages even through his silence,” Gianfranco Ravasi, an Italian cardinal, told the newspaper Il Messaggero.
The Vatican on Thursday released its calendar of liturgical celebrations for Easter Holy Week.
For the moment, the Pope is not on the agenda.
Whether or not he would be able to take part depended on his health, the Holy See press office said.
A spokesman added: “It will be necessary to see improvements in the Pope’s health condition over the coming weeks to evaluate his potential presence, and on which terms, at Holy Week celebrations.”
From left, SNAP, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, activists Sarah Pearson, Peter Isely, and president Shaun Dougherty talk to reporters during a press conference in Rome, Tuesday, March 25, 2025 (Associated Press)
ROME (AP) — A network of clergy sex abuse survivors on Tuesday announced a database of Catholic cardinals’ records on the handling of such cases in a bid to influence the next papal conclave, while urging Pope Francis in a letter to adopt a worldwide zero-tolerance policy following the U.S. church example.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests unveiled “Conclave Watch,’’ a database on cardinals’ records on clergy sex abuse that it hopes will put the issue at the center of consideration whenever the next pope is chosen.
SNAP board members arrived in Rome three weeks ago as Pope Francis was hospitalized in life-threatening condition, with the prospect of a conclave seemingly near. He returned to the Vatican on Sunday after beating double pneumonia, with doctor’s orders to take it easy for the next two months — putting to rest at least for now notions of a papal resignation or a funeral that would trigger the process to choose a successor.
“Many people have asked me … ‘Why now? The pope is sick. Now is not the time,’ ’’ Shaun Dougherty, SNAP Board president and a survivor from Pennsylvania, told a news conference. “And we determined if not now, when, and if not us, who?’’
The database was set to go live soon, starting with six cardinals, five of whom were chosen for their decision-making roles in the Roman Catholic church on the handling of clergy abuse cases. More will be added.
The initiative vets cardinals who are considered contenders for the papacy on their records handling sexual abuse cases, including whether they were involved in covering up cases, as well as their acceptance of a zero-tolerance law that SNAP wants Francis to adopt.
SNAP also released a letter to Francis urging him to adopt its zero-tolerance law, drafted with canon and civil lawyers as well as human rights experts that would remove known offender priests from ministries and hold bishops accountable in cases of coverups.
To date, the only place where there are norms for removing known sexual offenders from the priesthood is the United States, said Peter Isely, of the network’s global policy working group. “The United States is just 6% of the Catholic world. So 94% doesn’t have that,’’ he said.
The group hopes the letter will be delivered to Francis by Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean victim of abuse appointed by the pope as an international advocate for survivors, by the end of the week.
SNAP underlined the importance of pushing the issue as the pope continues his physical recovery, in light of his announcement in February that he would produce an apostolic exhortation dedicated to children aimed at educating them about their rights. They hope that their definition of zero-tolerance could be truly enshrined.
“We wish him a full recovery because we have work to do together,’’ Isely said.
WASHINGTON, DC — The arm of the church serving U.S. Armed Forces and veterans hospitals is one of the few Catholic groups that has not created a public list of credibly accused priests. And there are lots of them — roughly 140 from the World War II era until today, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis.
Roughly 140 Catholic clerics credibly accused of molesting children have served as military chaplains over the years — including 10 priests who also ministered in Illinois and, altogether, may be responsible for sexually abusing more than 50 kids, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis.
But you wouldn’t know that from the Archdiocese for the Military Services, the arm of the Catholic church for the U.S. Armed Forces, Veterans Affairs hospitals and federal employees serving outside the country.
Headed by Archbishop Timothy Broglio and ministering to about 1.8 million people, the military archdiocese maintains no public list of credibly accused clergy — among just three major U.S. ecclesiastical jurisdictions without one.
A number of Catholic leaders and reformers, along with some of the faithful in the pews, have encouraged dioceses and religious orders to come clean about sexually abusive members in the name of healing and atonement over a crisis that’s unfolded over decades and ruined many lives.
To date, 31 U.S. archdioceses have done so, posting publicly available lists or personnel files of credibly accused clergy online, with San Francisco and Miami the only ones, along with the military, not to do so.
Most of the smaller geographic units of the church — called dioceses — also have some level of public disclosure, including the Diocese of Cleveland for which Broglio was ordained.
A Broglio spokesman rejects what critics brand as needless secrecy by saying the vast majority of priests serving for the military services archdiocese are essentially on loan from other wings of the church.
“Because priests who serve in the U.S. military or Department of Veterans Affairs are not incardinated in this archdiocese, they remain subject to their bishop of incardination’s practices of publishing a list of credibly accused clerics and those practices vary,” he says.
“There are, however, eight clerics currently incardinated in this archdiocese: the archbishop for the Military Services, USA, four auxiliary bishops, one retired auxiliary bishop and two permanent deacons. No cleric incardinated in this archdiocese has ever been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor.”
Archbishop Timothy Broglio meets Pope Francis in 2022. Vatican Media
Yet most archdioceses that maintain a public list don’t only include their homegrown clergy. The majority also disclose those who were based or ordained outside their jurisdictions but served locally — whether “extern” priests who came from another diocese, or members of religious orders such as the Dominicans, Franciscans or Jesuits that span geographic boundaries, follow in the mold of different saints and have their own leadership structures.
The Archdiocese of Chicago, the arm of the church for Cook and Lake counties led by Cardinal Blase Cupich, in 2022 began including on its public list the names of accused members of religious orders who’d served in that domain.
Raoul’s pivotal report on church sex abuse and cover-ups
That was done before Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul released a critical report on the scope of sex abuse and cover-ups in the church in Illinois — and after Cupich for years argued that the semi-autonomous nature of different church organizations prevented the inclusion of anyone not directly answerable to him or his predecessors.
Also not long ago, Cupich began publicizing the names of local clergy with allegations substantiated after their deaths — a decision that brought to light three credibly accused priests who once served as military chaplains:
The Rev. David Ball, who sometime before his death in 1999 had been a Navy chaplain and also worked at Angel Guardian Orphanage on the edge of Rogers Park and St. Lambert Church in Skokie.
The Rev. William Meagher, who before his death in 1980 also had been a Navy chaplain and worked at parishes in Cicero and Wauconda and at Columbus Hospital in Lincoln Park.
The Rev. Edmund Skoner, who had been an Army chaplain during World War II and worked at parishes in Chicago and Highland Park before his death in 1988.
Details on what transpired with those men, and when, aren’t clear. Neither Cupich nor his aides would answer questions.
Cupich’s office, which ministers to a flock of roughly two million Catholics, announced in January that a South Side priest who previously served as a military chaplain had been accused of molesting a child decades earlier on the West Side.
The priest has denied the allegations and is being sidelined amid an investigation. He has not been charged with a crime. The parish in question has been the subject of credible allegations involving another cleric in past years, as well as complaints believed to be false and money- driven.
Another priest, the Rev. Michael J. Hogan, has been on Chicago’s list since 2006. He molested two boys in 1985 while assigned to a parish in Brookfield, records show.
He was also a chaplain in the Air Force Reserves. Aides to one of Cupich’s predecessors, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, told the military archdiocese in 1986 about Hogan’s misconduct when he wanted to transfer into an Air National Guard unit at O’Hare Airport and needed them to vouch for him, records show.
A high-ranking military cleric wrote back: “I feel right now it is not in the best interest of all concerned that Father Hogan be in the Reserves.”
Months later Hogan resigned as an Air Force Reserves 1st lieutenant. He resigned from the priesthood in 1993 and was laicized in 2015.
He couldn’t be reached for comment.
140 clerics, at one point military or VA chaplains, credibly accused of abuse
A Sun-Times review of dozens of church lists and other public records, along with interviews, found that about 140 Catholic clerics who at one time worked as military or VA chaplains have been credibly accused of at least one child sex offense occurring while they held that role — or before or afterward.
Their names are spread across more than 70 church lists and in other records.
They include: four priests who had also served in downstate Illinois parishes; one priest from the Diocese of Gary, the Rev. Ambrose McGinnity, who had also served in Gary, Hobart and Whiting; and four priests who were part of the Jesuit’s Midwest province, two of whom once served in Chicago. That includes the Rev. Thomas Powers, who worked at Loyola University Chicago in the 1980s in between two stints with the Army. He was linked to at least two victims and died in 2019.
The Sun-Times found a number of other clerics have been accused in lawsuits and elsewhere, but they don’t appear on church lists for reasons not always clear.
A once-secret letter shows communication between the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Archdiocese for the Military Affairs over a Chicago priest, the Rev. Michael Hogan, who had been accused of child sexual abuse. Archdiocese of Chicago files
Broglio’s office said it’s aware of seven credibly accused clerics who served since 1985 “with an ecclesiastical endorsement and faculties from the Archdiocese for the Military Services.” All were out-of-state clerics.
Military officials wouldn’t comment.
Although Broglio’s office emphasizes that no priest with a credible allegation is currently serving in his archdiocese, and most accusations in the public realm are quite old, officials won’t say how many accusations the group is aware of in total, and whether there are any contemporary incidents or claims.
Even so, the Sun-Times found that many accusations from past decades have only recently surfaced, especially since the latest wave of the abuse crisis exploded in 2018. The scandal prompted criminal investigations, more victims to speak out and improved disclosure from some corners of the church as members clamored for greater transparency.
The case of the Rev. Alvin Campbell
That year the Diocese of Springfield released its first-ever list, with the Rev. Alvin Campbell among those mentioned.
He was an Army chaplain between 1963 and 1977, after which the Springfield diocese took him in — knowing he might be a child molester. That’s according to Raoul’s 2023 report, which also made clear that church leaders in the military had been aware of Campbell’s misconduct and covered it up.
“Prior to Campbell’s arrival, a senior Army chaplain telephoned the diocese” — then led by Bishop Joseph McNicholas — and told church officials that “Campbell has a moral problem with boys/young men and this has surfaced and was being brought against him when he chose to resign,” the report says.
Also relayed to McNicholas’ office was that the “matter had been handled ‘sub secreto’ through the military delegate in Germany and there had been no scandal through publicity.”
Campbell ended up serving at seven Illinois parishes — including Springfield’s cathedral — and molesting at least 33 kids. Victims described the abuse as “masturbation, group masturbation, photographing abuse acts, groping, oral sex performed on children, anal sex performed on the priest, anal sex performed on children, fondling, kissing and pornography,” records show.
In 1985, he pleaded guilty but mentally ill to sexually assaulting children, and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. He died in 2002.
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield, among the places child-molesting priest Alvin Campbell served after a stint as a military chaplain. He is believed to have molested at least 33 children. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Carol M. Highsmith
The Springfield diocese’s list also includes the Rev. Joseph C. O’Brien, who served as a Navy chaplain from 1950 to 1955. He is accused of molesting at least 14 kids before his death in 1978.
David Clohessy, a leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, says the church has a tendency to minimize clergy abuse by portraying it as a long-ago problem.
But “a true shepherd” would care about even the older instances because they involve “the sheep that have been suffering the longest,” said Clohessy. His group is among those that have criticized Broglio’s operation for what is described as continued secrecy over abuse.
The military archdiocese says its “worldwide mission is to provide for the pastoral care of the 1.8 million Catholics serving in the United States Armed Forces, their family members, students at the Military Academies, patients in VA medical centers and U.S. governmental personnel serving abroad.”
“It is the only agency responsible for endorsing and granting faculties to Catholic chaplains and deacons in service to those populations.”
At last count, there were 533 Catholic priests in the military, 212 of whom are on active duty, “with the remainder in the reserves, National Guard, Air National Guard, or serving as civilians whether full or part-time,” Broglio’s spokesman says. Just over 100 are with the VA and five are with the Civil Air Patrol.
Broglio was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 to oversee the military archdiocese, and he’s also the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that has pushed back against President Donald Trump’s administration over increasingly restrictive immigration policies, as the church sees itself as a proponent of “our most vulnerable sisters and brothers.”
Clohessy says he wishes the bishops were equally as outspoken on the sex abuse front, adding that the public won’t ever know the true extent of the problem in the military — past or present — without Broglio disclosing all the names and allegations.
While growing up in Missouri, Clohessy says he was molested by a priest, the Rev. John Whiteley, who served for part of his ministerial career as a military chaplain, and who’s listed as credibly accused by the Diocese of Jefferson City.
A recent letter from the Diocese of Jefferson City to survivor and victim advocate David Clohessy, which states that the priest who sexually abused him decades ago had been laicized. Provided
The military chaplaincy was often seen as a dumping ground in previous years for problem priests. Non-Catholic chaplains also have had abuse claims, among them a non- denominational Christian chaplain at Fort Leonard Wood base in Missouri who was convicted in 2021 of child rape, according to published accounts and interviews.
Others have been convicted of crimes against adults, including a Southern Baptist military chaplain who was sentenced to prison after “pleading guilty to adultery and threatening to kill his mistress,” according to the denomination’s description of the case in a once-secret list made public in 2022.
Clohessy says he was surprised to receive a letter from the church this month saying that — 34 years after he sued over his abuse — Whiteley “has recently been removed from the clerical state,” meaning that while he apparently hasn’t been in public ministry for many years, he still had been a priest on the books until now.
In Rhode Island, a Diocese of Providence priest, the Rev. Edward Kelley, was pulled from public ministry in 2015, two years after he stopped being an Army chaplain, records show. Now on Providence’s public list as credibly accused, Kelley died in 2022.
The Rev. Arthur Perrault was convicted in New Mexico in 2019 of molesting a boy at Kirtland Air Force Base and elsewhere years earlier. Court records show he had been a chaplain for the Air National Guard, and was extradited from Morocco to face trial.
Now 87, Perrault is in federal prison in Texas and declined to comment.
He’s on public lists maintained by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the Archdiocese of Hartford, but neither references his military service.
Records show Perrault spent time at a treatment facility for troubled priests run by a religious order called the Servants of the Paraclete that in part focuses on clergy with addiction and sexual deviancy.
The priest who founded that group, the Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald, had been a military chaplain during World War II and the “personal plight” of fellow wartime priests helped inform his decision to create the specialized ministry, according to an online biography.
Fitzgerald’s group appears to have been funded in part with help from a late Chicago archbishop whose name is chiseled into a cornerstone of one of its buildings.
A former facility in New Mexico for troubled priests run by the Servants of the Paraclete. A cornerstone of one of the buildings at the complex thanks late Chicago Archbishop William O’Brien for funding help. Courtesy of Patrick J. Wall
A pattern of lack of transparency and accountability
Over the last few years, the Sun-Times has published a series of news stories chronicling the lack of openness and accountability by the church over clerical sex abuse more than 30 years after the first wave of the scandal came to light.
The articles document how disparate and incomplete lists maintained by church organizations in the U.S. have robbed the public of a full accounting — something victims say is critical to their healing.
“The benefit to survivor-victims and their families, it’s so obvious and apparent that” a public list “helps persons who were abused,” says Kathleen McChesney, Chicago’s former FBI chief who’s been in involved in church reform efforts since leaving the government.
“It’s very disappointing that there are archdioceses and, perhaps, several dioceses that still have not” created one.
Cupich’s list — with more than 160 names, including the four ex-chaplains — is still missing some accused clerics, the Sun-Times has found.
Other church lists don’t include assignment histories at all, or those not outside the local jurisdiction, so it’s difficult to gauge from public documentation all alleged priest offenders who may have been chaplains.
A number of Catholic male religious orders — including the Servites, whose U.S. headquarters is on the West Side — have no public list and won’t explain why.
If the military archdiocese maintained a public list of accused offenders, it would likely be among the largest in the U.S.
The Diocese of Joliet, the arm of the church for DuPage, Kendall and Will counties with more than 500,000 Catholics, has more than 70 names.
The Diocese of Rockford, the arm of the church for McHenry and Kane counties, has about 25 names.
The military archdiocese was created by Pope John Paul II in 1985 after serving since World War I as a sort of satellite entity answerable to bishops from the Archdiocese of New York.
A spokesman for New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan says that military “vicariate” was “a separate entity, both canonically and civilly” from the Archdiocese of New York. Accordingly, the New York public list doesn’t include the names of all offending chaplains from that era.
Some activists have suggested the church create a uniform or universal sex offender registry naming abusive clergy.
One Vatican official told the Sun-Times that’s unrealistic as a global endeavor, saying, “It’s impossible to have such a list in many countries, certainly in the EU — as that would be against the public law.”
A hodgepodge of clergy sex offender lists
Experts say it’s certainly possible in the U.S., but Pope Francis has allowed local bishops and religious orders to decide if and how to publicly disclose such information, leading to a hodgepodge of often-incomplete logs, if they exist at all.
Some church leaders — including Cupich, and a consortium of male religious orders called the Conference of Major Superiors of Men — have recommended that Catholic organizations come clean with names.
But an arm of the Vatican recently rendered a written opinion that frowns on public lists, saying they have the capacity to damage the reputation of someone who may not have been through the legal system and, if dead, can’t defend themselves.
That’s similar logic to why San Francisco’s archbishop hasn’t created a public list, though with his archdiocese now in bankruptcy court, that may change. In other situations where church organizations sought bankruptcy protection following a deluge of potentially devastating lawsuits brought by sex abuse accusers, the groups have agreed — or been compelled — to post the names of the accused and sometimes other documents.
The Archdiocese of New Orleans, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020 under pressure over sex abuse litigation, is still working toward financial settlements with accusers, but has agreed to publicly release once-secret files on abusive clergy and potentially add names to its existing list of reputed child offenders.
Among the clerics on there since 2020 is the Rev. Brian Highfill, who worked as a priest in the New Orleans area before serving as a long-time Air Force chaplain.
While New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond was investigating earlier claims of child abuse against Highfill in 2018, he reached out to Broglio, who didn’t mention Highfill had been accused of sexual misconduct with an adult years earlier, officials say.
The Broglio spokesman says that’s because Aymond had only asked about abuse involving minors.
“The vast majority of Catholic priests who have served as U.S. military chaplains served with honor,” the spokesman says, “chief among them Vietnam War hero Father Vincent R. Capodanno and Korean War hero Father Emil J. Kapaun, both of whom earned the nation’s highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, and are now under consideration for sainthood.”
WASHINGTON, DC — The arm of the church serving U.S. Armed Forces and veterans hospitals is one of the few Catholic groups that has not created a public list of credibly accused priests. And there are lots of them — roughly 140 from the World War II era until today, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis.
A once-secret letter shows communication between the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Archdiocese for the Military Affairs over a Chicago priest, the Rev. Michael Hogan, who had been accused of child sexual abuse. Archdiocese of Chicago files
