First Palm Beach Diocese bishop criticized over priest sex scandal
T h o m a s V. D a i l y, t h e b i s h o p e me r i t u s o f t h e Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, who raised tens of millions of dollars to repair schools and churches but whose last years were marred by criticism of how he had handled the church’s sexual abuse scandals in Boston and Brooklyn, died early Monday in Queens. He was 89. Daily was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palm Beach. He was installed in 1984 when the diocese was carved out of parts of the Orlando and Mi a mi d i o c e s e s , a n d h e served here for six years.
A B r o o k l y n d i o c e s a n spokeswoman announced Daily’s death.
Appointed by Pope John Paul II in 1990 as the sixth bishop of the diocese, which covers Brooklyn and Queens and is home to about 1.5 million Catholics, Daily presided until 2003, when the pope accepted his resignation 10 months after he was required to submit it at age 75.
In his first news conference in 1990, Daily distinguished himself from the more liberal Bishop Francis Mugavero, saying in response to a reporter’s question that he would bar Gov. Mario M. Cuomo from speaking at parish churches in the diocese, which included Cuomo’s home borough of Queens, because of his position on abortion.
The governor had said he supported abortion rights and public money for abortions for the poor while being privately opposed to abortion.
“I find that a contradiction, and I don’t buy that,” the bishop said. “Politicians have to be consistent, especially when it comes to the life issue.”
In his 13 years overseeing the diocese, Daily developed a reputation as a genial priest’s bishop who forgave more than $100 million in parish debts, raised $67 million in a capital campaign and consolidated parishes.
In 1995, he helped arrange Pope John Paul II’s visit to Queens, where he celebrated Mass at Aqueduct Racetrack.
But the bishop’s legacy was clouded by criticism, coupled with his own second thoughts, about his response to lawsuits by people alleging that they were abused as minors by priests in Brooklyn and especially in Boston.
Daily had been chancellor and vicar general in the Diocese of Boston under two former archbishops, Cardinal Humberto Medeiros and, briefly, under Medeiros’s successor, Cardinal Bernard F. Law.
It was Daily who allowed the Rev. John J. Geoghan on a planned two-month sabbatical to Italy before placing him back in the same parish near a family whom Geoghan had traumatized.
Daily informed neither law enforcement nor the parish priest of the allegations against Geoghan, who became the country’s most notorious example of a predatory priest.
Da i l y wa s n a med a s a defendant in dozens of suits filed by people who claimed that Geoghan, who was later defrocked, had molested them in his three decades as a priest.
In 2002, the Boston archdiocese settled the Geoghan lawsuits for millions of dollars.
Geoghan, who was accused of molesting almost 150 boys, was convicted of groping a 10-year-old boy and was serving a sentence of nine to 10 years in a Massachusetts state prison when he was strangled by another inmate in 2003.
A s ke d i n a d e p o s i t i o n why he never investigated w h e t h e r G e o g h a n h a d molested children beyond those of a family he had met with in 1982, Daily replied: “I’m not a policeman. I am a shepherd. I am a pastor who has to go after the Lord’s sheep and find them and bring them back to the fold and give them the kind of guidance and discipline them in such a way that they will come back.”
James M. O’Toole, a history professor at Boston College, said of Daily by email that “without excusing anything that he did or did not do, it seems to me that at some level he simply did not know what to do.”
Thomas Vose Daily was born on Sept. 23, 1927, in Belmont, Mass., a Boston suburb.
He graduated from Boston College and St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Mass., and was ordained as a priest in 1952.
In response to the sexual-abuse scandals, many re ve a l e d by T h e B o s t o n Gl o b e ’s S pot l i g ht Te a m, the subject of an Oscar-winning 2015 film, Daily said he regretted some of his actions but argued that he had been following procedures generally accepted at the time.
When he re s i g ne d , he acknowledged that the scandal had brought sleepless nights.
“S o m e p e o p l e c a r r y heavy, heavy crosses,” he said. “They do it in union with Jesus Christ. For what? For life.
“They hold it for life everlasting,” he said.