Sex abuse report lists beloved priest; Pa. church reels
PITTSBURGH — Everything felt normal until the news alert popped up on Cindy Depretis’ cellphone Tuesday afternoon. It was a link to a list of the hundreds of Catholic priests in Pennsylvania accused of abusing children in a bombshell grand jury report. She scrolled to the names of priests near Pittsburgh.
“I got to the C’s,” she recalled tearfully as she sat in her office at Holy Angels Parish. Friends started to text her. “Is that our Father Crowley?” She could only force out one word: yes.
The Rev. John David Crowley for decades had been the hero of Holy Angels, a white clapboard church in southeast Pittsburgh, tucked below the bypass, by the old narrow-gauge railroad running along the creek. He was the pastor there for nearly 34 years, known as one of the most popular priests in the region. Then, in 2003, he abruptly retired.
Last week, the church learned why: Crowley had been accused of sexual abuse, including of a minor, and the claim was found to be credible and substantiated. The bishop of Pittsburgh at the time, Donald Wuerl, now a cardinal and the archbishop of Washington, gave Crowley the choice to voluntarily retire and quit active ministry, or face removal.
Crowley chose retirement. The families of Holy Angels were kept in the dark. They even protested his departure on his way out.
Across the country last week, Catholics reeled from the news that Pennsylvania priests had abused more than 1,000 children over decades, and that bishops largely hid their crimes from the public. In the Pittsburgh diocese, which had almost a third of the state’s accused priests, Catholics in nearly every parish tried to figure out if the pastors they knew had ever been accused, or had known, of allegations they kept secret.
Some of the names on the list were no surprise, as some priests had faced public criminal proceedings and were removed from ministry. Other priests had been the subject of rumors. But many, like Crowley, had died before their actions were publicly revealed.
When asked about Crowley at the church this past week, parishioner after parishioner struggled to respond. A man leaned on the railing of the church steps and cried as he remembered how Crowley had baptized his children. Women confided that they had been tossing and turning every night, unable to sleep. After long silences, many insisted the allegations just had to be false.
The Rev. Robert J. Ahlin, the current pastor, sat motionless in his suspenders at the parish house the day after the report was released. When he arrived to take over after Crowley left, he remembered getting some calls from parishioners wary of the official line that he had chosen to retire.
“You always hear rumors,” Ahlin, 74, said. “No one at the time said, ‘Father did so-and-so, he was removed.’ ”
Minutes later, Ahlin decided to read the grand jury’s findings for the first time. He silently pulled up Page 631 of the massive report, where Crowley’s case was recorded: A mother and her twin adult daughters, one of whom was 16 at the time of victimization, brought a complaint against Crowley in 1992 and again in late 2001.
Later, an adult man reported that Crowley had sexually abused him when he was 11 to 12 years old.