Report documents eight decades of Capuchin province's poor handling of sex abuse

National Catholic Reporter ^ | Jun. 18, 2013 | Joshua J. McElwee

[haffast]

For eight decades, leaders of a community of Catholic priests and brothers spanning 10 U.S. states acted inadequately in responding to sex abuse allegations and prioritized protecting accused abusers over their victims, concludes an audit released by the group Tuesday.

The report, released by a province of Franciscan priests known as Capuchins, could raise questions of how communities of religious, which are not under direct control of bishops, are handling abuse allegations.

It also addresses themes many critics of the U.S. church's response to sex abuse have raised since the issue made national headlines in 2002.

The report says that at the heart of the Capuchins' inadequacy to respond to the abuse was a culture of clericalism that placed the needs of priest-abusers above their lay victims and deference to lawyers who "revictimized" those victims in an attempt to protect the clerics from costly lawsuits.

"It is the opinion of the auditors that the Capuchins' response to sexual abuse reports was deficient, especially their failures to report abuse to civil authorities and their inadequate pastoral responses to victims," states the report, which was conducted by the Capuchins' St. Joseph Province by three auditors over the last year and which examined province records back to 1932.

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The report also concludes that since the 1930s, when it says records were first available, the province rarely reported abuse to authorities, spent more money on hiring lawyers than on aid to victims, and routinely moved offenders between positions without divulging complaints against them.

"Through much of our history as a province, we have failed," Capuchin Fr. John Celichowski, the province's leader, said in a media call Tuesday announcing the report. "We violated the trust of those who were harmed [and] their families as well as the wider community in the church."

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[haffast]

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[Partisan Gunslinger]

Why do you think it is not good?

Have you read about Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, what happened when he was recovering from wounds, that caused him to found the Jesuits? His visions he was having?