Bombshell: Illinois AG says Catholic Church failed to disclose hundreds of abuse allegations against priests

Via The New York Times: 

The Catholic Church in Illinois withheld the names of at least 500 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors, the state’s attorney general said Wednesday in a scathing report that accused the church of failing victims by neglecting to investigate their allegations.

The preliminary report by Attorney General Lisa Madigan concludes that the Catholic dioceses in Illinois are incapable of investigating themselves and “will not resolve the clergy sexual abuse crisis on their own.”

Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, said in a statement, “I want to express again the profound regret of the whole church for our failures to address the scourge of clerical sexual abuse.

“It is the courage of victim-survivors that has shed purifying light on this dark chapter in church history.”

Ms. Madigan, a Democrat who served four terms as Illinois’ attorney general and is the daughter of the state’s powerful and longtime speaker of the House, is days away from leaving office. She chose not to run again.

CNN adds:

“By choosing not to thoroughly investigate allegations, the Catholic Church has failed in its moral obligation to provide survivors, parishioners and the public a complete and accurate accounting of all sexually inappropriate behavior involving priests in Illinois,” Madigan said in the statement.

“The failure to investigate also means that the Catholic Church has never made an effort to determine whether the conduct of the accused priests was ignored or covered up by superiors.”

Madigan began her investigation in August, after a Pennsylvania grand jury released a 900-page report detailing horrific abuses by 300 Catholic clergy against more than 1,000 victims. Since then, 36 dioceses have publicized self-reported lists of clergy “credibly accused” of abusing minors. (There are 197 dioceses in the United States.)

But advocates for survivors of sexual abuse have challenged many of the lists, calling them incomplete or evasive. Few of the lists detail exactly when the abuse claims were made, or what was done about them. Madigan’s criticism seems to lend credence to those claims.

“The preliminary stages of this investigation have already demonstrated that the Catholic Church cannot police itself,” Madigan said. “Allegations of sexual abuse of minors, even if they stem from conduct that occurred many years ago, cannot be treated as internal personnel matters.”