Over 40 people, many of them former parishioners, gathered Sunday afternoon outside the closed St. Adalbert Catholic Church in Pilsen to honor their patron saint on his feast day. The celebration began with a Litany to St. Adalbert, the church’s and Poland’s shared patron saint. The group offered petitions first in Polish, then Spanish, then … Read more
The first time it happened, the priest offered Terry Neary a cookie. Neary, then an eighth grade student, was working an after-school job in the rectory of St. Ethelreda in Chicago. He followed the Roman Catholic priest into the kitchen, where, Neary has alleged, the 75-year-old man sexually abused him that day and a few … Read more
Acting on concerns that more than 1,000 reports of possible sexual abuse by Catholic clergy may not have been properly reviewed by DCFS, the child welfare agency has opened 24 new investigations into alleged priest misconduct and hired a law firm to probe why the cases weren’t immediately addressed. The reports were received by the … Read more
In the weeks since Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan released a scathing report faulting the Illinois dioceses for failing to investigate hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, a daunting question has lingered on the minds of parishioners: Which priests were accused? Unlike a sweeping grand jury report in Pennsylvania that identified more … Read more
he former president of Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox, who is under criminal investigation for allegations he sexually abused a male student in the mid-1990s, has gone AWOL from the Augustinian order to which he belongs, an official with the religious order said. Sister Mary Ann Hamer, assistant treasurer for the Province of Our … Read more
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan made clear Wednesday that her decision to release a report identifying hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests was supposed to send a message to a contingent of U.S. bishops gathering in the state next month. But the Archdiocese of Chicago fired back Thursday, saying bishops will not discuss … Read more