The cardinal leading Knock pilgrimage who authorised $20,000 payouts to abuse priests The archdiocese will pay $21m to 300 victims
He led the way as the f irst direct f light brought pilgrims from the States to Knock... but scandal is never far from Cardinal Timothy Dolan
Dolan pretended to celebrate Mass
as a child
FOR Irish-American Catholics, there are few more alluring sites than Knock. The faithful in the States have desperately held on to their roots, combining their strongly held religious views with their proud Irish ancestry. Whether it is first or third generation, they’ve grown up listening to Lady of Knock sung by Dana or Daniel O’Donnell. The idea of a pilgrimage to that very same place in Co. Mayo — where locals claimed to have witnessed an apparition of the Virgin Mary, St Joseph and St John the Evangelist in 1879 — is high on the dream destination list for many Irish-Americans, people from all over the States who may only get to visit Ireland once in their life. A direct flight makes that easier for them and this week’s pilgrimage from New York to Knock marks a tourism boom and raises the hopes of Irish Catholics all over America.
It’s an opportunity for them to come in their droves — indeed, many of the pilgrims who travelled to Knock this week had never been to Ireland before. The idea now is to make Knock as popular a religious destination as Medjugorje and Lourdes — and the American market is one of the most lucrative.
As the inaugural flight touched down in Knock this week, Enda Kenny was at the top of the queue to welcome the passengers. Despite the drizzling rain, the atmosphere was one of celebration. Having just finished a hearty Irish breakfast on-board, the 180 pilgrims prepared to disembark.
As the plane doors opened, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, led the way down the steps to meet the Taoiseach, smiling and waving at the crowds gathered to greet them. At the ensuing reception, he announced to those gathered: ‘Lord it is good to be here.’
It’s a sentiment that was felt by most among the party, not least because Cardinal Dolan has already been tipped as a possible option for Pope. But unbeknownst to the 150,000 devotees who are expected to visit Knock this week, his rise through the ranks of the Church has not been without controversy.
And as the Church attempts to claw back its reputation — especially in Ireland, where the Pope sent an unprecedented letter to the faithful in an effort to bring Catholics back to Mass following the damning clerical abuse scandal — it would perhaps be most useful to distance the Knock pilgrimage from the very same scandal. But it is one in which Cardinal Dolan played a very questionable role — one which he says continues to haunt him to this day.
Cardinal Dolan — an Irish Catholic himself — was born to be a priest. He pretended to celebrate Mass as a child growing up outside of St. Louis, Missouri and once stated: ‘ I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a priest.’
Consequently, he attended the seminary and was ordained. In 2001, he became the Auxiliary Bishop of St Louis, and the following year he became the Archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin — a position he held until 2009. It was there that he would face some of the most difficult challenges of his life.
Everyone in Ireland knows the name of Fr Tony Walsh, probably the most notorious child sexual abuser the State has ever known. His counterpart in Milwaukee is Fr Lawrence Murphy. He was a hearing priest who could sign and worked from 1950 to 1974 at St John’s School for the Deaf, where he was popular and beloved by children — whose affections he would prey upon and abuse.
The 2012 documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, describes how Murphy cunningly chose deaf children whose families could not communicate by sign language — ensuring the victims could not tell their parents what was happening.
He would abuse the boys in their dormitory, in a closet, in his office, at his cabin where he would take them on trips away, even in the confessional, which is a canonical offence which has no statue of limitations. He was a horrendous and prolific predator.
The abuse was first brought to the attention of the Catholic Church by a visiting priest from Chicago who filled in for Murphy on one of his holidays. Fr David Walsh could sign, and one of the boys worked up the courage to tell him while Murphy was gone.
The priest alerted the church and even the papal nuncio. At one stage, Murphy was sent away for rehabilitation, but nothing else was done — and he continued to abuse.
Eventually, Cardinal Dolan’s Milwaukee predecessor, then Archbishop Rembert Weakland, flew to Rome in an effort to get Murphy removed from the priesthood. Murphy fought it every step of the way.
The deaf victims had started their own campaign, printing up flyers and putting them on the windshields of Mass-goers to alert them that Murphy was a serial child molester. They took lawsuits and eventually the archdiocese removed Fr Murphy from St John’s and sent him to Wisconsin to live at his family’s summer house. When the case was more fully investigated, it was estimated that Murphy had abused up to 200 children. But he still died a priest — and was buried in his vestments.
Cardinal Dolan, when he became Archbishop of Milwaukee, inherited the Murphy problem — and the systemic abuse that seemed entrenched in the Milwaukee diocese. He was compassionate and sympathetic with the
victims and said it was ‘impossible to exaggerate the gravity of the situation, and the suffering that victims feel, because I’ve spent the last four months being with them, crying with them, having them express their anger to me’. But Cardinal Dolan’s efforts to handle the problem have since been criticised. In an attempt to remove offending priests from service — to expedite the Church’s costly and time- consuming laicisation process — in 2003 he authorised payments to the same predatory priests of up to $20,000. The process is not necessarily uncommon in Church practice, but in a diocese under a microscope, many saw the payouts as outrageous compensation for child molesters.
And statements from Cardinal Dolan — unearthed in church documents — did not help. Despite his expressions of sympathy in public, much of what he said was interpreted as the opposite. In a letter in 2003 to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was overseeing abuse cases, Cardinal Dolan requested speedy laicisation for offending priests. He wrote: ‘As victims organise and become more public, the potential for true scandal is very real.’
Several publications, particularly The New York Times — Cardinal Dolan is now Archbishop of New York — repeatedly highlight these payments to sex offenders.
Cardinal Dolan responded to accusations of giving payoffs as ‘false, preposterous and unjust’.
Worse, though, was the release of Archdiocese of Milwaukee docu- ments in 2013, which showed that in 2007 Cardinal Dolan had sought permission from the Vatican to move almost $57 million into a cemetery trust fund — seen by many as a move to protect the Church’s assets from victims seeking compensation.
His request in 2007 was made just before the Wisconsin Supreme Court gave the clerical abuse victims the green light to sue the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The archdiocese argued the $57 million was allocated by Cardinal Dolan’s predecessors. But the move, when it was made public in 2013, became highly controversial.
In a letter to Rome in 2007, Cardinal Dolan said transferring the assets to the trust fund, ‘ I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.’
In 2011, after Cardinal Dolan left Milwaukee for New York, the new archbishop Jerome Edward Listecki filed for bankruptcy for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. On Tuesday, the archdiocese said it will pay $21 million to more than 300 clerical abuse victims — ending the four-year bankruptcy proceeding. In 2013, days before Cardinal Dolan flew to Rome for papal proceedings to elect a new Pope, he was deposed in Milwaukee about when he learned of allegations of sexual abuse and how soon he made those accusations public.
At the time, his spokesman said: ‘Today Cardinal Dolan had the longawaited opportunity to talk about his decision nine years ago in Milwaukee to publicise the names of priests who had abused children and how he responded to the tragedy of past clergy sexual abuse of minors, during the time he was privileged to serve as the Archbishop of Milwaukee. He has indicated over the past two years that he was eager to cooperate in whatever way he could, and he was looking forward to talking about the good work and progress that took place to ensure the protection of children and pastoral outreach to victims.’
But Cardinal Dolan has clearly not taken any of his decisions lightly, and he has said as much in interviews.
‘Does it haunt me? Yes, it does,’ he said of the scandal, which he called the most challenging issue in his time as Archbishop of Milwaukee. ‘ And I’m not afraid to admit that.’
Despite that, Cardinal Dolan has remained one of the most highprofile US Catholics and he continues to rise among canonical ranks.
The Knock pilgrimage has obviously increased his profile here. But in a country so hurt by Church decisions regarding criminal priests and payments, perhaps his involvement has tarnished this opportunity. The Church is moving forward with this push to rank Knock with Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje, but even the faintest association with the scandals of years past could drag it back.
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