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A deacon at a church in Round Lake has been suspended after the Archdiocese announced an investigation into him regarding the sexual abuse of children.
Archbishop of Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich announced the news in a letter to members of St. Joseph Catholic Church, 114 North Lincoln Avenue in Round Lake, on Wednesday.
InDepth NH, Damien Fisher, October 31, 2025
The New York sex abuse lawsuit filed against Manchester Bishop Peter Libasci is getting dismissed weeks after the case was sent to mediation.
Lawyers for the defendants, Libasci and the Roman Catholic order the Sisters of St. Joseph, and the estate of the alleged victim, Charles O’Connor, filed a joint stipulation this month in Suffolk County Supreme Court in New York to dismiss the case with prejudice. The agreement to permanently dismiss the case comes weeks after Judge Leonard Steinman sent the lawsuit to mediation.
Michael Connolly, Libasci’s attorney, said in an email Saturday: “The civil lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court in Suffolk County against Bishop Peter Libasci of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, has been dismissed with prejudice.
“The allegations in the lawsuit were false. Bishop Libasci never abused anyone. The proof revealed as much during the course of the lawsuit, and the lawsuit has been discontinued with prejudice and without Bishop Libasci paying any money,” Connolly said.
Manchester’s Communications Director Tara Bishop sent InDepthNH a brief statement: “The Diocese of Manchester is not a party to the lawsuit filed against Bishop Libasci.”
O’Connor filed his lawsuit against Libasci in the summer of 2021, but the case was frozen by the bankruptcy proceedings involving the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island. The diocese filed bankruptcy after being hit with hundreds of child sex abuse lawsuits. Libasci served as the auxiliary bishop in Rockville Centre until he took over Manchester in 2011.
O’Connor died last summer before a federal bankruptcy court approved Rockville Centre’s $323 million settlement with the survivors. After O’Connor’s passing, his estate took up the claims against Libasci and the organizations connected to the alleged abuse.
The bankruptcy settlement resulted in three defendant organizations named in O’Connor’s lawsuit getting dismissed; the Saints Cyril and Methodius Roman Catholic Church, the Saints Cyril and Methodius, and there Our Lady of Guadalupe School. That left Libasci and the Sisters of St. Joseph to face O’Connor’s accusations.
The parish and parochial schools where Libasci was assigned were named as defendants, as O’Connor’s lawsuit states the parish and school officials should have known Libasci should not have been around children.
O’Connor claimed the abuse happened when he was an altar boy in the 1980s, while Libasci was a parish priest. The lawsuit alleges Libasci groped the 13-year-old boy. Libasci has maintained his innocence since news of the lawsuit first broke. Libasci’s legal team filed a motion in 2021 that denies all of the allegations.
Under church law, Libasci now faces an internal investigation into the abuse claim, known as a Vos Estis investigation. That investigation is being handled by Worcester, Massachusetts Bishop Robert McManus. Under the internal process, the Vos Estis investigation cannot start until the civil lawsuit is resolved. Worcester diocesan spokesman Ray DeLisle has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Sarah Pearson, with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said O’Connor, lay Catholics, and the rest of the public deserve more than the Vos Estis investigation.
“We don’t put a lot of stock in the accuracy of those investigations that are conducted by the Vatican,” Pearson said.
McManus is a problematic figure for sex abuse survivors, Pearson said, and should not be in charge of investigating a fellow bishop.
“He has his own history of actions related to concealing abuse,” Pearson said,
In 2023, McManus released a report on sex abuse allegations made in the Worcester diocese going back to 1950 which did not include the names of any credibly accused priests. The report also claimed that just one abuse case occurred in Worcester after 1998.
Pearson wants to see an independent third party investigation take over and make its findings public.
“We just want to see the truth come out,” Pearson said.
Whatever the outcome of the Worcester investigation, Libasci’s term in Manchester is coming to a close. He turns 74 in November, and the Vatican imposes a retirement age for priests and bishops when they turn 75.
Boston Globe, Travis Andersen, September 25, 2025
Mayor Thomas P. Koch of Quincy came under fire this week for comments he made linking the clergy sex abuse scandal to homosexuality.
Koch, who is Catholic, made the comments Monday during an interview with Dan Rea on WBZ News Radio.
When Rea at one point criticized the Catholic church over its response to the abuse crisis, chronicled extensively in a 2002 Boston Globe Spotlight team investigation, Koch said, “That was mostly homosexual issues, not pedophilia.” After Rea mentioned adolescent victims, Koch said pedophilia is defined as attraction to “a younger age” than a teenager.
Koch’s comments were swiftly condemned by Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who has long represented victims of clergy sex abuse.
“For the Mayor of Quincy to blame mostly homosexual issues for the Catholic Church scandal is baseless, ill-advised, and harmful to victims or survivors,” he said in a statement. “After my review over the decades of thousands of Catholic Church documents involving childhood clergy sexual abuse, I have discovered no evidence to support the Mayor’s assertion.”
Such comments contradict “the evidence and [are] disrespectful to courageous clergy sexual abuse victims,” he said.
Koch told the Quincy-based Patriot Ledger that he was “inartful” in his comments, while also citing studies that he said showed most abuse victims were teenage boys.
“Having said that, I don’t believe that homosexual abuse is higher than heterosexual,” Koch said, adding that “if I offended anybody, I apologize. That was never the intent. … I have gay friends and relatives and all. I treat everybody the same.”
Koch could not immediately be reached for comment.
He was also criticized by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, which said Wednesday that it was “appalled” by his comments.
“The conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia has been repeatedly refuted by medical and scientific experts,” the group said in a statement. “Mayor Koch’s comments serve to scapegoat gay men, imply that middle-school and high-school boys are not actually victims of abuse, and completely dismiss every girl or woman who has been assaulted in the Catholic Church.”
During the interview with Rea, Koch said he believes the church has been unfairly singled out in the press for its abuse issues, which have also arisen in areas such as youth sports and schools.
“The church was not very popular with the secular media,“ Koch told Rea. ”They took a beating. … You don’t read about it every day when it happens around the country in other circumstances.”
Koch had come onto Rea’s show mainly to discuss a lawsuit filed by a group of Quincy residents seeking to block the installation of two Catholic statues outside the public safety building. The suit remains pending.
Catholic News Agency, Francesca Pollio Fenton, Hannah Brockhaus, September 20, 2025
A documentary on Father Marko Rupnik’s alleged abuse of consecrated women, the personal fallout for two of his alleged victims, and what happened when the claims became public decades later premiered at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month.
“Nuns vs. The Vatican” includes the detailed stories of Gloria Branciani, Mirjam Kovac, and Klara (identified only by her first name), three former members of the Loyola Community in Slovenia in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Rupnik, a co-founder of the community, is accused of having committed sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse against dozens of women religious.
Through the stories of Branciani and Klara, the film, which premiered Sept. 6, argues that Rupnik’s alleged abuse was inextricably linked to his religious art. It also claims he was protected in the Catholic Church, in which he shot to stardom in the 1990s, and interviews experts who say the Vatican’s response has been inadequate.
Branciani was part of the Ignatius Loyola Community in Slovenia, which was co-founded by Rupnik in the 1980s. In the documentary, she recalls how Rupnik allegedly groomed and then sexually and psychologically abused her in the early ’90s and how the abuse was intricately connected with the creation of his art.
According to Branciani, her complaints about Rupnik went unanswered, she was punished by the community’s mother superior at the time, Ivanka Hosta, and forced out of religious life by Father Tomáš Špidlík, a Czech cardinal and Jesuit who died in 2010. Špidlík, who was close to Rupnik and the priest’s art and spirituality center in Rome, the Centro Aletti, allegedly wrote the resignation letter on her behalf.
In addition to testimony from the alleged victims and their lawyer, it includes the voices of journalists, psychologists, and other abuse experts, including Barbara Dorris, a former director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), who was sexually abused by a priest between the ages of 6 and 13.
Dorris and Laura Sgrò, a lawyer for some of Rupnik’s alleged victims, are highly critical of the Church hierarchy’s response to clerical sexual abuse throughout the documentary.
No one from the Vatican participated in the documentary. The film said requests for comment from Rupnik and the former head of the Loyola Community, Hosta, were ignored.
Sarah Pearson, a spokesperson for SNAP, said in a statement to CNA that “SNAP is proud of the legacy of Barbara Dorris, a longtime leader and tireless advocate for the 1 in 3 nuns who experience sexual abuse by priests.”
Pearson continued: “The case of Jesuit priest Father Marko Rupnik illustrates this catastrophe with tragic clarity. Despite overwhelming reports of abuse, Rupnik was shielded for years — kept in ministry through the Vatican’s intervention under Pope Francis. Only after prolonged public outrage was he finally subjected to a canonical process.”
Italian Lorena Luciano directed the film. It was produced by Filippo Piscopo. “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” star Mariska Hargitay is among the documentary’s executive producers.
A spokesperson for “Nuns vs. The Vatican” told CNA the documentary will continue to be shown at film festivals in North America, and they are working on getting a screening at the Vatican.
“We are also waiting to see whether Pope Leo will push for the ecclesiastical trial against Rupnik to happen in the fall,” a spokesperson for the production company added.
Earlier this year, the Vatican removed artwork by Rupnik from its official websites. Digital images of the Slovenian priest’s sacred art, which were frequently used by Vatican News to illustrate articles of the Church’s liturgical feast days, are no longer found on the digital news service.
The changes to the Vatican News and the Dicastery for Communication websites came soon after Pope Leo XIV met with members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors on June 5.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Laura Schulte, September 4, 2025
MADISON – Despite reports of abuse involving a priest in the Madison Diocese, officials were planning to allow him to escort a group of young adults to Rome next year, according to the diocese’s social media.
Andrew J. Showers’ arrest in Clintonville last month on suspicion of child sex crimes came after the diocese had already received complaints about his behavior, including a report of an assault of a young woman in Chicago last year.
At a Sept. 4 media conference, Patricia Moriarty said Showers approached her and her friends at a social event, introduced himself as a priest, then groped her underneath her clothes before sharing his business card with her.
Moriarty’s father, John Moriarty, said he called the diocese at least five times reporting the abuse, but was unable to speak directly with Bishop Donald Hying. John Moriarty did reach someone at the diocese and reported the abuse, he said. The family reported the incident to the Chicago Police, who conducted an investigation.
Patricia Moriarty said she wanted to share her story after hearing of Showers’ arrest to hold the diocese accountable and show others they knew the priest had assaulted others before.
“I made the decision to share my story in hopes that others will feel empowered and encouraged to speak their truth as well,” she said. “In my experience, this decision was far from easy. It meant revisiting an experience that left me feeling powerless, that I knew staying silent would only protect those who are selfish and wrong.”
Chicago Sun-Times, Kaitlin Washburn, July 31, 2025
A Peruvian woman assaulted by a priest alleges Pope Leo XIV, while he was a bishop in Peru, neglected to investigate her case.
Ana María Quispe Díaz of Chiclayo, Peru, appeared publicly for the first time in downtown Chicago alongside advocates from Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a group representing survivors of clergy abuse.
“I have been quiet since the pope was elected, but I am not planning on being quiet forever,” Díaz, 29, told reporters Thursday through a translator.
Díaz alleges she was abused by a priest in Chiclayo when she was 9 years old. Her two sisters were also assaulted by the same priest. In April 2022, she said, the three sisters brought their allegations to Robert Prevost, who was then Bishop of Chiclayo.
“He told us how much he appreciates us for coming forward,”Díaz said. “He told us, ‘You are very brave and I believe you.’”
But Prevost never opened an investigation into the priest, Díaz alleged.
Vatican officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Vatican ended its own investigation into the alleged abuse in 2023 after civil authorities said the allegations were beyond the statute of limitations, according to The New York Times. The Vatican told the paper that Prevost had done more than was required by church procedures in investigating the allegations in at least one of the cases.
Last summer, the new bishop at the Diocese of Chiclayo said their case was “improperly handled” and opened an investigation, according to SNAP, the network of survivors. But the priest, who continued to work for the church, is now able to voluntarily retire from ministry and the investigation has been delayed, said Sarah Pearson, a spokesperson for SNAP.
“For all the bishops and cardinals in the Catholic church who have been a part of the cover-up, there needs to be accountability,” Pearson said Thursday. “That accountability is not going to come through the church itself. Civil society needs to demand this type of change.”
SNAP has repeatedly called on the Vatican to enshrine in canon law that the Catholic church has zero tolerance for sexually assaulting children and any clergy member who does so should be permanently removed from the church. That’s currently the standard in the United States but not globally.
In addition to the zero-tolerance law, SNAP demands the Vatican provide reparations for survivors, enter into international legal agreements, and establish an independent panel of survivors and experts overseeing how bishops handle abuse cases.
The New York Times, Julie Turkewitz, Simon Romero, Mitra Taj and Elisabetta Povoledo, June 28, 2025
The contrasts are glaring.
In one case, Pope Leo XIV — then known as Bishop Robert Prevost — sided with victims of sexual abuse, locking horns with powerful Catholic figures in Peru. He sought justice for victims of a cultlike Catholic movement that recruited the children of elite families and used sexual and psychological abuse to subordinate members.
In another case, Bishop Prevost was accused of failing to sufficiently investigate claims by three women that they had been abused by priests as children. The accused were two priests in Bishop Prevost’s diocese in a small Peruvian city, including one who had worked closely with the bishop, according to two people who work for the church.
As Leo assumes the papacy, becoming leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, his handling of clergy sexual abuse will be closely scrutinized, and the two cases have left him open to starkly diverging judgments — praise for helping victims in one, claims that he let them down in the other.
In the first, victims have hailed as heroic his work taking on the ultraconservative group, Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, which had grown more influential after Pope John Paul II gave it his pontifical stamp of approval.
Breaking with other powerful Catholic figures in Peru, Bishop Prevost arranged talks between victims and church leaders and helped those who suffered abuse to get psychological help and monetary settlements. As he rose through the Vatican’s ranks, Bishop Prevost kept raising the pressure on Sodalitium, which was ordered to disband only weeks before he became the first American to lead the Catholic Church.
In the second case, in the northern Peruvian city of Chiclayo, the three women and victims’ advocates say, Bishop Prevost conducted a superficial investigation that led the Vatican to close the case relatively quickly.
They also say that despite a church order prohibiting one of the accused priests, the Rev. Eleuterio Vásquez, from practicing amid the inquiry, he continued leading public Masses.
Photographs and video posted on Facebook and verified by The New York Times showed Father Vásquez leading church ceremonies during the investigation, raising questions among some critics about what oversight, if any, Bishop Prevost put in place to ensure that victims were protected from a potential abuser.
Vatican guidelines discourage “simply transferring” an accused priest to another parish while an investigation is ongoing.
Bishop Prevost also appointed a priest, the Rev. Julio Ramírez, to counsel the women. Father Ramírez warned them that they should not expect much accountability from Rome because their abuse had not involved “penetration.”
“I don’t want it to sound bad,” Father Ramírez told one of the women in a recorded telephone conversation, a copy of which was obtained by The Times. “Nor are we defending him. But since it hasn’t reached a situation — I know what you’ve experienced is traumatic — but it hasn’t reached a situation of rape, it seems that they’ve given priority to other cases.”
The Vatican says Bishop Prevost followed church protocol after the women went to him with their abuse claims, conducting an initial investigation and sending his findings to Rome, where a final decision would be made.
Ulices Damián, a lawyer for the Chiclayo diocese, said it was “false” that the bishop did nothing to help the women. “He acted in accordance with the procedures,” he said.
The Times also identified a second case of a priest accused of abusing a minor who was able to continue his clerical duties for years while Bishop Prevost led the diocese in Chiclayo — even after the church ordered him to cease work in his parish while an investigation was conducted.
The Vatican has struggled to rebuild trust after years of clergy misconduct and what advocates for abuse victims say has been a woeful response by church leaders.
The Vatican’s existing rules to protect children, even if the pope followed them when he was in Chiclayo, are one of the fundamental problems, advocates say, failing to provide full accountability or justice.
Activists have asked for changes that include a universal zero-tolerance law, which would permanently remove from ministry clergy who are found guilty by a church tribunal of abuse or covering up wrongdoing. Currently, only Catholic authorities in the United States has imposed such standards. The law would also mandate independent oversight of bishops handling abuse cases.
In Leo’s past, some see a man who will take strong steps against abuse. Some of Sodalitium’s victims say the criticism of his actions in Chiclayo has been exaggerated and amplified by forces favorably disposed to Sodalitium, as an act of retaliation.
“He was never at all an indifferent, indolent or cowardly bishop,” said Pedro Salinas, a journalist and Sodalitium abuse victim.
But others look at the pope’s time in Chiclayo and see a man who will push few boundaries when it comes to rooting out abuse.
“Survivors don’t trust him,” said Peter Isely, a founding member of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. “He’s going to have to prove his trust and he’s going to have to bend over backwards to prove it.”
The reporting stunned the Catholic establishment.
Just as Bishop Prevost took over as leader of the Chiclayo diocese in 2015, two Peruvian journalists released a book containing shocking details about Sodalitium, which was founded in 1971 by a layman, Luis Fernando Figari.
The book, “Half Monk, Half Soldier,” by Mr. Salinas and Paola Ugaz, said the group evolved into a fanatical far-right movement with a culture of sexual abuse.
In a subsequent independent probe, investigators, including a former F.B.I. official, found that Mr. Figari would use a whip with metal points to punish members, make his dog bite them, burn them with a lit candle and make them wear a belt that caused electric shocks.
In interviews with The Times, several survivors said few church leaders in Peru were willing to take their claims seriously.
Of those who did, “the most important was Robert Prevost,” said Oscar Osterling, who recalled Mr. Figari summoning him as a youth, making him strip naked and filming him.
Dozens of victims eventually came forward.
Sodalitium members included Archbishop José Antonio Eguren, a powerful church leader in the northwest city of Piura, a three-hour drive from Chiclayo.
In 2018, Bishop Prevost helped organize a meeting in Lima, the capital of Peru, between senior clergy and Sodalitium victims, helping them obtain mental health counseling and financial payments, victims said.
For a bishop in the Peruvian church, taking such measures was trailblazing. For years, prominent Catholic clergy opted to look the other way even as victim after victim came forward with harrowing tales of sexual, physical and psychological abuse by Sodalitium’s leaders.
Then, in April 2023, Francis brought Bishop Prevost from Chiclayo to the Vatican, where he was appointed to run an influential department overseeing the selection of many new bishops. Francis also made him a cardinal that year.
Soon, the Vatican sent two top investigators to Peru to look into claims against Sodalitium.
Part of their inquiry focused on Archbishop Eguren, who Ms. Ugaz had said was involved in a scheme, together with companies tied to Sodalitium, to drive poor farmers off their lands.
One of the Vatican investigators, Msgr. Jordi Bertomeu, told Spanish news media that Cardinal Prevost had played an “essential” role in taking on Sodalitium, including demanding that Archbishop Eguren resign.
The archbishop did, stepping down in April 2024.
But Bishop Prevost was already facing a different challenge.
Though he was called a champion for victims of Sodalitium, the three women from a working-class neighborhood in Chiclayo who claimed they had been victims of clerical abuse say they received very different treatment.
It started with a visit they made to the future pope in 2022.
As children, they told Bishop Prevost, they had been abused by two priests in the diocese. One, Father Vásquez, had taken two of the girls to a mountain retreat on separate occasions, they later told a news outlet, Cuarto Poder, and he had gotten into bed with them.
“He started lifting me up and rubbing me on him,” one of the women told the television program. She was 11 at the time, according to the news report, and said she did not understand what was happening.
One of the women, Ana María Quispe, now 29, has since spoken out extensively on TikTok and Facebook and in Peruvian media, and said she had decided to go to Bishop Prevost because she was haunted by the idea that her silence might have let an abuser continue to do harm.
“This could happen to my daughter,” she said on TikTok. “I can’t stay quiet — no more cowardice.”
Ms. Quispe said on TikTok that Bishop Prevost told the women he believed them and even encouraged them to report the abuse to civil authorities, which they did.
But then, Ms. Quispe said, not much seemed to happen.
The diocese claimed in public statements that Father Vásquez had been “prohibited” from celebrating Mass amid an investigation.
Social media posts reviewed by The Times, however, showed Father Vásquez continuing to participate publicly in Mass at least three times during the period the Vatican said an inquiry was being conducted. He was even photographed jointly officiating Mass with Bishop Prevost.
In abuse cases, Vatican guidelines instruct church leaders to conduct an initial investigation and send their findings to Rome. The Vatican suggests that leaders assemble testimony and establish basic facts, but gives them broad latitude in deciding what to report to higher-ups.
A spokesman for the Vatican, Matteo Bruni, said Bishop Prevost’s investigation went “beyond the requisites” and included receiving a written report from the women and searching the archives of the diocese for similar accusations against Father Vásquez.
Prosecutors in Peru closed their civil investigation in 2022, according to the diocese, the same year the women went to Bishop Prevost with their accusations, because the claims went back so many years that they fell outside the statute of limitation. Prosecutors declined to comment.
The Vatican closed its own investigation into the women’s claims in August 2023, citing the decision by civil authorities and a lack of evidence.
In the other case in Chiclayo identified by The Times, the diocese had ordered a priest, the Rev. Alfonso Raúl Obando, accused of sexually abusing a minor, to stop any clerical work in his parish.
But more than a dozen Facebook posts identified by The Times, many of them from the period when Bishop Prevost led the diocese, showed the priest continuing to work as a priest — often with children. In one instance, Father Obando used a church Facebook page to ask children to to send him their photographs directly on WhatsApp.
The Vatican recently stripped Father Obando of his clerical status, but he has continued working in Chiclayo. Father Obando did not respond to calls and text messages seeking comment.
Ms. Quispe was outraged over the handling of her case and, starting in November 2023, began speaking out on online, accusing church leaders of failing to deliver justice or accountability and laying part of the blame on Bishop Prevost.
“They always protect them,” she said on TikTok of accused priests, giving them “total freedom to continue doing harm with no repercussions.”
An intermediary eventually put the frustrated women in touch with the Rev. Ricardo Coronado, a priest with conservative leanings who had been photographed socializing with Sodalitium members.
It was Father Coronado who connected the women with the news program Cuarto Poder, he said in an interview, which further amplified the critique of Bishop Prevost.
Similar criticism of Bishop Prevost had already been ramping up in Peruvian media, especially on conservative websites like La Abeja, which had tried to discredit investigations into Sodalitium.
Some Sodalitium victims said they believed the group was behind these efforts, effectively weaponizing the women’s claims to target Prevost.
“They mounted a smear campaign against Prevost, just as they did against me,” said Rocío Figueroa, 57, who said she was sexually abused by a Sodalitium leader when she was 15.
Father Coronado’s involvement in the case was brief. After a few months representing the women, he was defrocked amid separate claims of misconduct.
In the interview, he maintained that he was defrocked to remove him from the case. He also insisted that he had not acted on behalf of Sodalitium to represent the women.
A lawyer for the women declined to comment. The church declined to make Father Vásquez available for an interview.
A second priest accused by Ms. Quispe has a degenerative illness, the diocese said in a statement, and “is unable to defend himself, so no case can be opened against him.”
In late 2023, citing Ms. Quispe’s decision to speak out, the Chiclayo diocese said it had reopened the investigation into Father Vásquez.
With the case continuing, Father Vásquez recently asked to leave the priesthood, according to a person with direct knowledge of the case. The person asked not to be identified, fearing retaliation from the church. Father Vásquez is awaiting a decision from the Vatican.
Mr. Coronado, the defrocked canon lawyer, said he believed the new pope had mishandled the women’s claims in Chiclayo — not out of malice, but because of inexperience.
“The pope is another human being,” he said. “He’s not God.”
Associated Press, Mike Catalini, June 16, 2025
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey can have a grand jury examine allegations of clergy sexually abusing children, the state’s Supreme Court ruled Monday, after a Catholic diocese that had tried for years to block such proceedings recently reversed course.
The Diocese of Camden previously had argued that a court rule prevents the state attorney general from impaneling a grand jury to issue findings in the state’s investigation into decades of allegations against church officials. But the diocese notified the court in early May that it would no longer oppose that. Camden Bishop Joseph Williams, who took over the diocese in March, said he’d met with stakeholders in the diocese and there was unanimous consent to end the church’s opposition to the grand jury.
The seven-member Supreme Court concluded such a grand jury inquiry is allowed.
“Courts cannot presume the outcome of an investigation in advance or the contents of a presentment that has not yet been written,” the court wrote in an opinion joined by all seven justices. “We find that the State has the right to proceed with its investigation and present evidence before a special grand jury.”
The state attorney general’s office praised the decision in an emailed statement and said it’s committed to supporting survivors of sexual abuse.
“We are grateful for the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision this morning confirming what we have maintained throughout this lengthy court battle: that there was no basis to stop the State from pursuing a grand jury presentment on statewide sexual abuse by clergy,” First Assistant Attorney General Lyndsay V. Ruotolo said in an emailed statement.
The Camden Diocese is still committed to cooperating with the effort, it said in a statement.
“To the victims and all those impacted by abuse, we reaffirm our sorrow, our support, and our unwavering resolve to do what is right, now and always,” the diocese said.
An email seeking comment was sent Monday to the Catholic League, an advocacy and civil rights organization that still opposed the grand jury after the diocese’s change.
A Pennsylvania grand jury report in 2018 found more than 1,000 children had been abused in that state since the 1940s, prompting the New Jersey attorney general to announce a similar investigation. The results of New Jersey’s inquiry never became public partly because the legal battle with the Camden diocese was unfolding amid sealed proceedings.
Then this year, the Bergen Record obtained documents disclosing that the diocese had tried to preempt a grand jury and a lower court agreed with the diocese.
The core disagreement was whether a court rule permits grand juries in New Jersey to issue findings in cases involving private individuals. Trial and appellate courts found that isn’t allowed.
Hearing arguments on April 28, members of the high court repeatedly questioned whether challenging the state was premature, since lower court proceedings prevented New Jersey from seating a grand jury that would investigate any allegations or issue findings, called a presentment.
Lloyd Levenson, the church’s attorney, answered that “you’d have to be Rip Van Winkle” not to know what the grand jury would say.
“The goal here is obviously to condemn the Catholic Church and priests and bishops,” he said.
The court said Monday it wasn’t ruling on any underlying issues and a trial court judge would still have the chance to review the grand jury’s findings before they became public.
Mark Crawford, state director of the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, said Monday in a text message he’s “elated” by the court’s decision.
“Decades of crimes against children will finally be exposed,” he said.
In 2023, a trial court judge sided with the diocese, finding that a grand jury would lack authority because it would be focused on “private conduct,” rather than a government agency’s actions. An appeals court affirmed that judgment last year, and the attorney general’s office appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Documents the high court unsealed in March sketched out some of what the state’s task force has found so far, without specific allegations. They show 550 phone calls alleging abuse from the 1940s to the “recent past” came into a state-established hotline.
The diocese argued a grand jury isn’t needed, largely because of a 2002 memorandum of understanding between New Jersey Catholic dioceses and prosecutors. requiring church officials to report abuse.
But the Pennsylvania report led to reexamining the statute of limitations in New Jersey, where the time limits on childhood sex abuse claims were overhauled in 2019. The new law allows child victims to sue until they turn 55 or within seven years of their first realization that the abuse caused them harm. The previous statute of limitations was age 20, or two years after realizing abuse caused harm.
Also in 2019, New Jersey’s five Catholic dioceses listed more than 180 priests who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing minors over several decades. Many listed were deceased and others removed from ministry.
The Camden diocese, like others nationwide, filed for bankruptcy amid a torrent of lawsuits — up to 55, according to court records — after the statute of limitations was relaxed.
In 2022, the diocese agreed to pay $87.5 million to settle allegations involving clergy sex abuse against some 300 accusers, one of the largest cash settlements involving the Catholic church in the U.S.
The agreement, covering six southern New Jersey counties outside Philadelphia, exceeded the nearly $85 million settlement in 2003 in the clergy abuse scandal in Boston, but was less than settlements in California and Oregon.
Chicago Tribune, Rebecca Johnson, May 20, 2025
A group representing victims sexually abused by Catholic priests alleged on Tuesday Pope Leo XIV has exhibited a “pattern of failure to properly investigate abuse claims,” including allegations that the Chicago-born pontiff mishandled multiple cases while in prominent leadership roles in the city.
“It was his responsibility to follow the meager church protocols and laws put in place,” said James Egan, a spokesperson for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, at a news conference. “Given his record, it doesn’t seem that (he) prioritized protecting children at all.”
A longtime missionary, Pope Leo XIV was born Robert Prevost in 1955 at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, and grew up in south suburban Dolton. Prevost, the first American pope, was largely welcomed with open arms across the city, and described as someone who “cared for people.”
He called for environmental stewardship and caring for the poor in his inaugural Mass.
SNAP, however, said it wants to bring light to the “underground story of Prevost,” urging him to adopt policies to better protect children. The group filed a complaint against Prevost with the Vatican in March outlining his alleged missteps in Chicago while heading the Midwest Augustinian religious order and later as a bishop in Peru.
The Rev. Anthony Pizzo, current provincial of the Augustinians of the Midwest, said in response to the news conference that the order remains “steadfast in our commitment to the safety and well-being of the children and youth entrusted to our care.” He said Pope Leo established protocols for promoting child protection in 2001, and that his record shows a “dedication to child safety.”
“We know that the Pope will persist in his perseverance to protect children and vulnerable persons and to respond with care and compassion to those who come forward with allegations of abuse by the Church’s ministers,” Pizzo said.
Prevost was elected as provincial prior in Chicago in 1999, and later as the order’s worldwide leader. During that time, he came under fire for his handling of two sex abuse cases involving Augustinian priests in the area.
SNAP accused Prevost of allowing the Rev. James Ray, a priest accused of abusing minors and whose ministry had been restricted since 1991, to live at the Augustinian’s St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park in 2000 despite its proximity to a Catholic elementary school.
Ray, who was ordained in 1975 and laicized in 2012, had 13 reported accusers, according to a 2023 report from the Illinois attorney general. He has never been convicted of a sex offense.
The Vatican previously denied that Prevost approved the accommodation. Ray claimed in a Tuesday article published in the Sun-Times that Prevost “gave me permission to stay there.”
“We are not going to comment on third-party conversations that a reporter from another newspaper claims to have had with another individual, at this time,” Michael Airdo, an attorney for the Midwest Augustinians, said in a statement.
Airdo said Ray was placed at the friary from 2000 to 2002 as an “accommodation” to the late Cardinal Francis George as head of the Chicago archdiocese, and that he was “subject to restrictions” because of the abuse allegations. He said there were no allegations that Ray committed abuse while living there.
In cases where “established accusations” against a priest were brought to him, Airdo said Prevost “applied precautionary measures to remove the accused friar from active ministry, placing him in a setting where there would be no risk to minors.”
SNAP also condemned the order’s handling of allegations against the Rev. Richard McGrath, former president of Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox. McGrath served for 32 years as principal and then president of the school before retiring amid complaints that he had abused a student and had pornography on his phone. The order settled one accuser’s lawsuit for $2 million in 2023. McGrath was never criminally charged.
SNAP released a letter presumably from a parent to the Midwest Augustinians, asking them to stop McGrath from giving “back rubs to the boys at Providence.”
The group also pointed to the handling of John D. Murphy, who left the priesthood in 1993 after multiple abuse claims. The order has acknowledged it received an allegation against Murphy in 1981 but returned him to ministry after he received treatment. The order ultimately settled claims by 13 people in 2004 who said they had been molested by Murphy.
Murphy got a job in 1994 at the Shedd Aquarium, which included leading tours with children. The aquarium said it hired Murphy based on a “positive written record” from the order’s personnel director. He resigned in 2003.
“What was Prevost’s record? We see case after case of Augustinians — their abuse being covered up or ignored for years,” Egan, the SNAP spokesperson, said. “They were routinely put in roles that allowed them continued access and proximity to children.”
“Prevost, as head of the Augustinian order, had full responsibility for all of this, given the nature of his role,” Egan added. “Every case that came forward to the Augustinians was his responsibility to handle.”
SNAP called on Prevost to adopt a “zero tolerance law” into canon law and to submit to international legal agreements mandating transparency and accountability. They said he should make public statements related to sexual abuse and the cover-up by the Catholic Church.
“A child right now that’s being assaulted somewhere in the world — because that’s what’s happening right now — by some priest or some clergy, that child is more important than Pope Leo,” said Peter Isely, a founding member of SNAP.
The Guardian, Ramon Antonio Vargas, May 9, 2025
Groups supporting clergy-molestation survivors say they are gravely concerned and insulted by the election of Pope Leo XIV after he overcame questions about his handling of clerical sexual abuse cases earlier in his career to become the Roman Catholic church’s first-ever US-born leader.
Before Robert Prevost’s ascent to the papacy at age 69, he was leading a chapter of the Augustinian religious order in his home town of Chicago when allegations surfaced that a priest and Catholic high school principal under his jurisdiction had molested at least one student as well as kept child-abuse imagery.
Prevost reportedly allowed that cleric to continue in his role despite the allegations, though the Augustinian order later paid a multimillion-dollar settlement to the abuse survivor and in December booted the priest from the order.
Meanwhile, Prevost also did not impede another priest – whose ministry had been restricted in the wake of allegations that he abused minors – from living at an Augustinian residence that was near a Catholic elementary school. And, while serving as a bishop in Peru, Prevost heard from three women who accused two priests there of sexually abusing them as minors and have since claimed there is no evidence that much was done to investigate the cleric.
That history prompted the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap) to file a complaint against Prevost in March under church legislation implemented by the late Pope Francis that provided potential disciplinary measures against bishops who were found to have turned a blind eye to abuse of both children and adults considered vulnerable.
The complaint did not prevent Leo from being elected on Thursday after a short conclave at the Vatican, which prompted Snap to quickly issue a statement expressing “grave concern about his record managing abuse cases”.
“You can end the abuse crisis,” Snap’s statement said of Leo, who has not been accused of abuse himself and had previously headed the Vatican entity in charge of selecting new bishops from around the world. “The only question is: will you?”
In a separate statement, the Survivors of Childhood Sex Abuse (SCSA) said Leo’s election was “an insult” given that he was produced by the same Catholic hierarchy that has failed to grapple with the scale and systemic nature of the global church’s decades-old clergy molestation scandal.
“The Catholic hierarchy has not merely mishandled abuse allegations – it industrialized the process,” the SCSA’s statement said. “Pope Leo XIV … was in the rooms for all of it.”
Both organizations urged Leo to implement a true zero-tolerance policy with respect to taking action against clergy abuse claims as well as to provide victims of the scandal with reparations from church assets, among other demands.
Mitchell Garabedian, the Boston attorney who represented abuse survivors amid the clergy molestation scandal depicted in the Oscar-winning movie Spotlight, added: “The Catholic church has to understand that the safety of innocent children cannot be sacrificed for an outdated and inexcusable need to protect the reputation of the Catholic church.”
The Vatican’s press office did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the statements from Snap and SCSA. It has generally maintained that Prevost is free of any wrongdoing or followed canonical norms in the clergy abuse cases he has confronted.
Some of the scrutiny surrounding Prevost’s handling of those cases dates back to his 11-year tenure leading the Augustinian order’s midwest chapter in Chicago beginning in 1999. It was at some point “during his tenure”, NBC News reported, that claims surged saying the principal of Providence Catholic high school in New Lenox, Illinois, which was part of Prevost’s territory, had molested a student and possessed images of child abuse on his phone.
A statement issued on 12 May by an attorney representing the order’s midwest chapter disputed that. The statement said formal allegations against McGrath did not arise until late December 2017, after Prevost had already left. It also said the alleged abuse occurred between 1995 and 1996 at a time when Prevost was not working there.
Prevost – who was also the Augustinians’ worldwide leader for 12 years beginning in 2001 – never removed the principal, an Augustinian priest named Richard McGrath, as the Chicago Sun-Times has previously reported.
McGrath retired in 2017 after being faced with an investigation into the claims against him.
The abused student, Robert Krankvich, then sued in 2018. And in late 2023 the church agreed to pay him $2m – before Krankvich died in April at age 43.
“Money doesn’t bring happiness,” Krankvich’s father, also named Robert, said to the Sun-Times. “It gave him no closure.”
During Krankvich’s lawsuit, McGrath declined to answer whether or not he possessed child abuse images, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination, the Sun-Times reported. Yet McGrath denied molesting Krankvich and was kept off a list of alleged Augustinian abusers published in 2024, though he resigned in light of the claims against him.
Monday’s statement from the midwest US Augustinians said the order lacked the required “moral certitude” to include McGrath on the list of alleged abusers.
Separately, in a statement issued on 6 May, the Augustinians confirmed McGrath had been expelled from their order, according to New Lenox’s Patch news website. But the order’s later statement said “grounds for his dismissal had nothing to [do] with any allegations of sexual abuse” and instead involved “a prolonged period of disagreement with his direct superior”.
It also said McGrath remained a member of the clergy but could not publicly minister.
The Augustinians reportedly did not disclose the factors behind McGrath’s dismissal, which occurred in December but was first reported on the eve of the start of the two-day conclave that vaulted Prevost to the papacy.
Separately, in 2000 and still early in Prevost’s stint as the midwestern US Augustinian chapter, the order stationed a member priest named James Ray in its St John Stone Friary in Chicago. The friary was adjacent to an elementary school, and since 1991, Ray was restricted from working around children because of accusations that he had molested minors. Survivors groups say those moves are not indicative of an organization doing everything it can to protect children. The Vatican has reportedly countered that Prevost was not the one who authorized Ray’s living arrangements at the friary.
Prevost subsequently spent eight years as the bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, beginning in 2015. According to a statement that they issued, three women told Prevost directly that they had allegedly been abused as minors by local priests named Eleuterio Vásquez González and Ricardo Yesquén.
But the women said they had no evidence any meaningful investigation into their claims ensued, and at one point they published several images showing Vásquez publicly celebrating mass on important occasions such as Easter despite purported assurances to them that he was suspended from such ministry, as the National Catholic Reporter noted in reporting on a case rife with conflicting claims.
Chiclayo’s diocese reportedly said the Vatican agency which investigates clerical sexual abuse cases found insufficient evidence to substantiate the accusers’ allegations – and that local law enforcement authorities reached a similar conclusion, in part citing the lapse of an applicable statute of limitations.
One of the accusers, Ana María Quispe, lamented in Spanish to the Peruvian television news program Cuarto Poder: “They have always told us the church is our mother – but a mother protects.”
For its part, Chiclayo’s diocese reportedly said “it is not true” that Prevost and the church “turned its back on the alleged victims”. The diocese reportedly said the accusers remained free to pursue complaints in civil court and have a standing offer of church-provided “psychological help if they required it”.
A statement from BishopAccountability.org contended that Prevost never published a list of accused abusers under his supervision, unlike many Catholic dioceses and religious orders which did as an offering of conciliation over the scourge of clergy molestation within the worldwide church.
Francis, who died on 21 April, made Prevost a cardinal in September 2023. A reputation as a “moderating influence” among the ideologically disparate bishops in Peru evidently helped Leo clinch the papacy – somewhat unexpectedly – on Thursday.
