A defrocked priest from the suburbs says the future Pope Leo XIV signed off on his move in 2000 to a Hyde Park monastery near a Catholic school after the priest had been accused of molesting children.
Robert Prevost, now newly installed as Pope Leo XIV, was the head of the Midwest province of the Catholic Church’s Augustinian religious order at the time.
“He’s the one who gave me permission to stay there,” James M. Ray, the former priest, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Ray was accused of being a pedophile priest, restricted from public ministry and needed someplace to live where the church deemed he wouldn’t pose a danger to the public.
Speaking with a reporter outside the suburban apartment complex where he now lives, Ray added context to a recent statement from a lawyer for the religious order about Ray’s move to the monastery on 54th Place operated by the Augustinians.
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