Adds 10 to list of clergy with ‘substantiated’ sexual misconduct allegations
At a closed-door gathering in August with young men studying to be priests at the Catholic Church’s seminary in Mundelein, Cardinal Blase Cupich boasted that the Archdiocese of Chicago’s “record” on sex abuse is “clean.”
“We are not what happened” in Pennsylvania, he said, referring to a grand jury report that’d been recently released showing decades of priests raping children and bishops covering up in that state.
Cupich also told the seminarians that an ongoing inquiry by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office into the handling of sexual predator priests in Illinois was no big deal, since the archdiocese, the church’s arm in Cook and Lake counties, already previously turned over all relevant information.
But on Wednesday night, Cupich’s office brought his past comments into question as the archdiocese highlighted the names of 10 more ex-priests and deacons — some deceased — with “substantiated allegations” of sexual misconduct with minors. The names were added to a lengthy public list of ex-clerics with dark histories.
Why they were added to that list now, and why they weren’t there previously, was not clear, as an emailed statement from the archdiocese didn’t specify, and Cupich’s press aides Paula Waters and Anne Masselli didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from the Chicago SunTimes.
In addition, few details were provided about what the 10 allegedly did, and the names came out the same night the archdiocese announced the controversial closure or consolidation of a number of South Side Catholic churches and schools.
Much of the alleged abuse occurred many years ago, according to the archdiocesan website, and the accused clerics who are still living are no longer in ministry.
The new names include archdiocesan priests Edmund F. Burke, Thomas Carroll Crosby, Dominic Aloysius Diedrich and Thomas Francis Kelly. It also includes deacons Patricio William Batuyong and Louis Wojtowicz and foreign priests Sleeva Raju Policetti and Czelaw Przbylo. The religious order priests were Eusebio Pantoja and Carlos Peralta.
At least some of the 10 former clerics have been in the news previously. In 2002, for instance, the archdiocese reported that Policetti, who had been assigned to St. Tarcissus Church on the Northwest Side, was accused of sexual misconduct with a parish teen. The priest fled Chicago for his native India.
In the release, officials said the larger list previously only contained names of priests who were alive when allegations of abuse were received. It said Cupich expanded the list “to include all diocesan, extern and religious order priests and deacons with allegations of child sexual abuse that were substantiated by the Archdiocesan Independent Review Board or similar archdiocesan process.”
The statement continued: “While we are adding these names today based on determinations made in past years, we are not changing our current process for receiving and handling allegations and adding names.”