If the Archdiocese of Milwaukee embraced transparency about child sex abuse as many other big Catholic organizations have done, the number of names on its public list of allegedly abusive clerics could triple, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have found.
Under retiring Archbishop Jerome Listecki, a South Side native who previously ministered in the Chicago area, the Milwaukee archdiocese’s list of “restricted” priests is among the least comprehensive of the 31 archdioceses in the United States that maintain a public accounting of an abuse crisis that has spanned decades.
All 48 men on Milwaukee’s list of alleged child sex offenders are diocesan priests, meaning they report or reported to Listecki or his predecessors or soon will report to another Chicago cleric, Jeffrey Grob, who will be installed in January as Milwaukee’s new archbishop.
The list excludes members of male Catholic religious orders who have been credibly accused of child sex abuse and lived, ministered or offended within that ecclesiastical jurisdiction that includes nearly 200 parishes and more than 500,000 Catholics in southern Wisconsin, including Kenosha, where the Chicago and Milwaukee metro areas converge.
Diocesan priests generally staff parishes. Religious orders often run Catholic high schools and aren’t limited to a single geographic diocese. Orders also maintain a particular spiritual mission and their own hierarchy but need permission from a local bishop to serve in his domain.
Roughly two dozen U.S. archdioceses publicize alleged abusers in both ministerial groups through lists, the release of personnel files or a combination of those. That includes Chicago’s archdiocese, though Cardinal Blase Cupich for years resisted including religious orders on his list. He relented in 2022 as Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul was preparing to release a report outlining the scope of abuse and secrecy by Illinois bishops.
Three archdioceses have no public accounting — Miami, San Francisco and one that covers the military.
Milwaukee appears to be one of just eight U.S. archdioceses that includes only alleged diocesan offenders and few if any accused religious order members. Milwaukee’s list would have about 140 names if religious order priests and brothers were covered, the Sun-Times and Journal Sentinel found, as well as several other accused diocesan priests who appear to be omitted.
The newspapers found:
- 28 members of the Capuchin Franciscans’ Midwest Province deemed to have been credibly accused of abuse have served within the boundaries of Milwaukee’s archdiocese, with none currently in active ministry, according to the group’s public list.
- 23 credibly accused members of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, served within Milwaukee’s boundaries, including at least a dozen previously assigned to Marquette University High School at various times, according to that order’s public lists. That includes the late priest Daniel J. Kenney, who was known to use a hand puppet of a monkey to interact with children.
- Eight credibly accused members of the Society of the Divine Word’s Chicago Province served or lived at some point in East Troy, Wisconsin, in Walworth County, part of Milwaukee’s archdiocese.
- Six credibly accused members of the Benedictine religious order have belonged to the Benet Lake Abbey in southern Wisconsin, according to that group’s public list. Among them is Brother Thomas Chmura, a monk arrested by the Antioch police in 2013 on charges of attempting to abduct a girl walking in the far northwest suburb.
- About another two dozen priests and religious brothers who belong to other orders or dioceses and at some point ministered or lived in the Milwaukee area aren’t on the Milwaukee archdiocese’s list but are on other official church lists or a list maintained by the church watchdog Bishop Accountability or in government records.
One of them is the late Rev. Bruce MacArthur, who was convicted of molesting kids in Wisconsin, where he served in parishes and as a hospital chaplain. Records show he admitted sexually abusing numerous children over a span of years. He’s on church lists in South Dakota and Texas, where he also ministered, but not Milwaukee.
Two of them are members of the Xaverian Missionaries who at some point were based in Franklin, Wisconsin, according to that group’s list.
Three of them are on the credibly accused list maintained by the Diocese of LaCrosse, Wisconsin — which Listecki formerly led — showing they had past assignments in the Milwaukee area.
Four are or were members of the Carmelite order, which has its own public list.
Another seven have been part of the Society of the Divine Savior, also known as the Salvatorian order, which has a local headquarters in the Milwaukee area and no public list.
“This question has been a matter of repeated consideration by the USA Province Provincial Council of the Society of the Divine Savior,” a spokeswoman says. “It has consistently been decided that the privacy interests of all persons involved weighs against publishing such a list.”
The Salvatorian spokeswoman confirmed the names of seven alleged offenders a reporter had found through other sources. But she wouldn’t say how many credibly accused members there are: “Out of the privacy interests of all persons involved in these matters, the USA Province is not providing that information.”
Such reasoning has been rejected by victims, church reformers and even some bishops, who have called for church organizations to be transparent to aid in healing for those who were abused and to seek atonement for the church’s failures, including coverups regarding abusers in the ranks of the clergy.
Pope Francis met in 2022 at the Vatican with leaders of several Catholic orders. Speaking about child sex abuse by clergy, he implored, “Please do not hide this reality.”
But he hasn’t mandated that orders and dioceses publicly come clean.
The Conference of Major Superiors of Men, a consortium of male religious orders in the U.S. that includes the Salvatorians, has recommended that its member groups release public lists of their clergy credibly accused of child sex abuse.
Some have, while others haven’t. Even among those that have, there’s often sparse detail, such as no assignment histories, making it difficult to know where alleged child molesters served and, if they’re still alive, where they are now. The same is true of some archdioceses that have omitted names of abusers on some lists, including Chicago’s, the Sun-Times has reported.
“I’m not sure that a constellation of bishops has an orchestrated strategy” of secrecy, says Jason Berry, a New Orleans-based filmmaker and author of a 1992 book about the church’s sex abuse scandal, “Lead Us Not Into Temptation.” “But what a given bishop does is heavily driven by what their attorneys tell them.”
Speaking generally about the American church, Berry says, “I think they’re in damage control of the worst kind, trying to reduce the coverage, trying to reduce the potential for more litigation, trying to keep the lid on as best they can.”
The Milwaukee archdiocese’s website says that only diocesan clergy are included on its list — which was created in 2004 by Listecki’s predecessor Timothy Dolan, now a cardinal overseeing the Archdiocese of New York — because the accused from other dioceses or orders who served locally “are not accountable to the archbishop of Milwaukee.”
The website says the Milwaukee archdiocese “has no way of knowing what allegations may have been received; whether they included allegations while in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee; how allegations were investigated; what standard was used in determining substantiation; and how allegations were eventually resolved.
“There is also no certainty that the archdiocese would be informed of allegations against every priest who worked at some point in the archdiocese. Instead of publishing what would be an incomplete list, the archdiocese leaves the listing of names of clergy with substantiated allegations to their respective” groups.
All Catholic dioceses in Illinois have public lists that include religious orders along with diocesan priests.
In Wisconsin, the dioceses of LaCrosse and Superior list alleged abusers from outside their jurisdictions, including members of religious orders. The dioceses of Madison and Green Bay do not. The latter excludes two dozen alleged child-molesting members of the Norbertine order based in DePere, Wisconsin, and overseeing St. Norbert College.
Milwaukee’s church leadership has rebuffed calls to include religious orders on their public list. Church watchdog Peter Isely says that, after the Milwaukee archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011 in the face of financial pressure over sex abuse, accusers submitted claims in the proceedings involving more than 200 other clerics, church employees and order members beyond the 48 named priests.
“If you don’t have the names up, you don’t care about children and families,” says Isely, who’s involved in several church reform groups including Nate’s Mission. “Who benefits from [omissions to lists]? The offenders and those who covered it up.”
It’s unclear how many of those additional people have been deemed to have been credibly accused. That’s something Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has been trying to determine in an ongoing statewide investigation of the Catholic church over abuse and coverups.
One tip spurred by Kaul’s investigation led to criminal charges against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for allegedly sexually assaulting a teen in Walworth County in the 1970s, though earlier this year McCarrick was deemed incompetent to stand trial due to health problems.
Earlier accusations against McCarrick, who had been the archbishop of Newark and Washington, D.C., helped fuel the latest wave of the U.S. abuse crisis in 2018, along with disclosures from a Pennsylvania grand jury showing hundreds of abusive clerics in that state.
McCarrick is on several public church lists of abusers, including those maintained by the Archdiocese of New York and the Archdiocese of Washington, but not Milwaukee’s.
Child sex abuse victims want the horror they experienced acknowledged by the church, says Michael Finnegan, an attorney with the firm Jeff Anderson & Associates who has sued Milwaukee’s archdiocese on behalf of accusers. “Being able to see their perpetrator on a list gives that validation,” and “it’s intentionally misleading” for the lists to omit religious orders or anyone.
Milwaukee’s list also appears to be missing the names of some diocesan priests, including the late Rev. Mark Santo, who had been a member of the Servite religious order but was assumed into Milwaukee under one of Listecki’s predecessors. Santo is on the list of credibly accused clergy in the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Missouri, but not Milwaukee’s.
Listecki wouldn’t comment.
Jerry Topczewski, Listecki’s chief of staff, says the archdiocese has “not been able to obtain details on why his name appears on that diocese.”
The Servites don’t have a public list and are the subject of a number of lawsuits in California over allegedly abusive clerics. Among them is the late Rev. Kevin Fitzpatrick, who once served in Chicago and also, according to his death notice, in Milwaukee.
Fitzpatrick isn’t on Chicago’s archdiocese list, either.
Nor is Santo, who also served in Chicago.
Another abuser who worked in both jurisdictions and isn’t on Milwaukee’s list and only recently was added to Chicago’s is former Augustinian priest John Murphy.
John D. Murphy, a former Catholic priest in the Augustinian religious order. He served in the Chicago region and in southern Wisconsin. After being omitted for years, his name recently appeared on the Archdiocese of Chicago’s list of credibly accused clergy, but he isn’t on a similar list maintained by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
Sun-Times file
Listecki’s office also wouldn’t say whether religious orders serving in the Milwaukee archdiocese must inform it about offenders from their ranks who have served in that area, as Cupich requires. Initially, Cupich hid that information from the public.
Grob, who has been one of Cupich’s auxiliary bishops and is set to be installed as Milwaukee’s archbishop on Jan. 14, succeeding Listecki, says it’s too early to discuss whether he will make any changes in terms of disclosure over abuse.
“It’d be very inappropriate for me to speak,” Grob says. “I have not studied the matter.”
Laura Schulte is a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter.
READ THE SUN-TIMES’ ORIGINAL INVESTIGATION
Click here to read Sun-Times Feb. 7, 2021, report.
Related past Sun-Times coverage on Catholic clergy sexual abuse.