Falsely Accused: In Today’s Climate, Can a Priest Clear His Name?

by Patrick Novecosky
National Catholic Register

Some priests who have been accused of sexual abuse are in a legal limbo, waiting to know if they will be cleared and allowed to return to ministry or dismissed from the clerical state altogether. A new organization has sprung up to help them.

July 14, 2004 / DETROIT — Father William Latern is waiting.

The diocesan priest has been cleared of allegations of sexual abuse but is unsure if he’ll ever be able to minister again publicly.

Because the media made his name public, Father Latern, who asked that neither his real name nor his diocese be identified in this article, said he’s not sure if his bishop will be able to put him to work anytime soon.

“No matter what is said or done, there are some people who will believe I’m guilty just because my name was in the newspaper,” he said. “How possible is it going to be for me to be effective as a priest?”

When the allegations surfaced, the bishop put Father Latern on administrative leave. He is receiving a salary but has to pay his own expenses — including rent, insurance and food.

Yet he says he’s better off than many other accused priests are.

“If there was an accusation, they were out,” he said. “There was no investigation, no nothing. Just the accusation was enough to end their priestly ministry.”

Joseph Maher believes there are hundreds of priests like Father Latern. Maher is co-founder of Opus Bono Sacerdotii, an organization whose Latin name means “work for the good of the priesthood.” The organization assists priests with its network of experts — financial advisers and medical and legal professionals in civil, criminal and canon law.

A Detroit-area businessman and Knight of the Holy Sepulcher, Maher helped found Opus Bono when a priest friend was accused of rape in 2002. A jury acquitted the priest of all charges in a criminal trial later that year.

Maher bailed the priest out of jail and hired a top criminal-defense attorney.

“The deal was that he would take the case pro bono for prayers from the priest,” Maher said, “and I agreed that I would drop everything and work full time on the case.”

Before the case even went to trial, Maher received a flood of calls from accused priests.

“I couldn’t continue to work full time, help all these priests and work on [the accused priest’s] case,” he explained. “We made one of those gut-wrenching leap-of-faith decisions to do this full time.”

‘Comforting’

Father Latern said just knowing there is a group with the interests of priests at heart is comforting.

“They have provided very good canonical advice and references as well as making legal resources available,” he said.

When priests are accused, they’re typically told to leave the rectory, Maher said.

Father Latern, who is getting a stipend from Opus Bono to help with expenses, said bishops have been under tremendous pressure, trying to return the priest to ministry but “recognizing the real hurt genuine victims have suffered, not wanting to seem insensitive to their needs.”

In the past, he noted, the priest was “always going to be believed,” no matter what anyone said. Now, no matter what the priest says, the “accuser is always going to be believed.”

But Maher says some diocesan officials have gone too far.

Cardinal Avery Dulles, a theological adviser to Opus Bono Sacerdotii, said bishops should give accused priests the right of self-defense and, if exonerated, return them to ministry.

Cardinal Dulles said the zero-tolerance policy established by the U.S. bishops in 2002 “does reek of certain injustices.”

“There are many who are accused who claim to be innocent and there seems to be no evidence against them,” Cardinal Dulles said. “The tendency of the bishops sometimes is to feel they’re an embarrassment and to get them to sign papers of laicization.”

He also warned of false accusations.

“There’s great opportunity for lawyers and others to come in and push a case for alleged victims and get settlements out of court just because the expense of defending [the priest] is so enormous and the publicity is so bad,” he said.

Double Standard?

Anne Burke, who just stepped down as interim chairwoman of the National Review Board commissioned by the bishops’ conference, said priests across the country should have uniform justice and due process. In an interview earlier this year, she said that was indicated in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ reports on sex abuse in the Church during the past half-century.

With the way the atmosphere is today, Burke said, a priest has to “stay removed” until he is exonerated.

“Subsequently, people do fear — even though there was an exoneration, people will question,” the Illinois appellate-court judge said.

She emphasized that the main thrust now is to protect children.

“There will be some rights trampled on,” she said. “The only hope we have is that the bishops will realize that there has to be uniform processes here to protect everybody.”

“We do have a uniform standard around the world,” Maher said in response. “It’s called the Code of Canon Law.“

The bishops’ conference’s Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which came out of their 2002 Dallas meeting, calls for due process for priests, according to conference spokeswoman Sister Mary Ann Walsh. And it makes a distinction between an accusation and a credible accusation, she said.

“If the accusation is credible, the priests are removed until it can be further investigated. Conceivably, a man may never go back to his priesthood. It may happen that he is removed from priesthood even without going through a complete canonical process. It’s a difficult situation, but it’s the nature of the crime,” Sister Walsh said.

Maher thought that made “no sense.”

“Canonical process is due process,” he said. “She is equating an accusation to a crime. It goes completely against canon law and the teachings of the Church. … The Church does not recognize a priest’s guilty without going through the complete canonical due process.“

Maher says all he really wants for priests is fairness. He points to recent allegations that Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., had a homosexual relationship with a man who committed suicide in 1978. Bishop Hubbard recently was cleared of the allegations by an investigation commissioned by the diocese.

But he had defended his decision to not step down, comparing his own case to that of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago. In 1993, seminarian Stephen Cook accused Cardinal Bernardin of sexual abuse. During an investigation — and until Cook retracted his allegations, saying he could no longer trust his memory — Cardinal Bernardin remained in office.

Cardinal Bernardin was “at peace with himself” when he was accused, Bishop Hubbard said. He “focused on the job at hand and the mission he had to do.”

But in a more recent case, Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, Australia, put himself on administrative leave when accusations were leveled against him. An independent inquiry found there was insufficient evidence to corroborate the accusations.

Cardinal Edward Egan of the Archdiocese of New York spoke out in support of Bishop Hubbard during a visit to Albany this spring. Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, had no comment about the apparent double standard of a bishop accused who does not step down while a priest who is accused is removed from ministry.

Albany diocesan spokesman Kenneth Goldfarb said Bishop Hubbard followed diocesan guidelines, which require that a priest accused of abuse that falls within the statute of limitations be placed on administrative leave during the investigation. He said that in Bishop Hubbard’s case, the accusation did not involve abuse of a minor, there was no credible evidence that the accusation was true and the allegations did not impede his ability to fulfill his role as bishop.

The Dallas norms, enacted long after Cardinal Bernardin’s death in 1996, also specify that a priest be removed only if the abuse falls within the statute of limitations and only if it involves abuse of a minor.

Maher pointed out that while the investigation was still under way Bishop Hubbard said he was going to follow due process, “that he’s innocent until proven guilty.”

“I’ve gotten hundreds of e-mails from priests who say, ‘What is this?’” Maher said. “This is all we’re asking for — a fair shake.’”

Patrick Novecosky writes from Ann Arbor, Michigan.