All lost their status as members of the clergy, the church said. “I’m fully committed to that because we can never truly heal unless we really create an open process,” he told .Īs of Friday, the Springfield diocese provided the following list of credibly accused priests and deacons who have had one or more allegations of sexual abuse of a child made against them. Louis this year.įord’s 10-member group is expected to recommend ways the diocese can improve its response to claims of sexual abuse.īetter communication with the public is key to that, Byrne said this week. Rozanski, before Rozanski was appointed archbishop in St. Ford was asked to supervise the task force by former Bishop Mitchell T. He noted the ongoing work of an independent task force led by retired Judge Daniel Ford of Pittsfield. In remarks to, the diocesan news outlet, Byrne linked the revision of the list of credibly accused clergy to a wider effort to provide transparency into church affairs. Even so, those stories of abuse as children or minors must be deemed to be credible by an internal review board. The new list no longer will exclude the names of clergy who died before they were identified by survivors. We have to know what exactly is going on.”īyrne told a member of the diocese’s communications department this week that he asked that a new roster of all credibly accused clergy be prepared - and made public early next year.īefore then, the diocese plans to contact survivors involved in the abuse cases. All of a sudden the surface was blown away and we realized we had a house of cards that had been constructed over decades. “Little did they realize that every time that that happened, below the surface, those cracks started forming. Brush it away, they thought, because scandal would be the worst possible thing,” Byrne said, speaking of steps taken to conceal evidence of clergy abuse. That it would hurt people’s faith if people know about this. “Generations ago, bishops did what they did because they were afraid of scandal. “The process of bringing things out allows us to see just what the effect of this is.” “Until everything is on the table, we can’t know how deep the necrosis is,” he said. In an interview with The Eagle, Byrne said the truth of what happened, however far back in the diocese’s history, needs to be brought to light. It made an exception for Weldon, adding his name immediately after the Velis report was released. The church’s policy has been not to include priests accused after their deaths, on the grounds that they are not able to respond to accusations. Weldon was bishop for 27 years and died in 1982. Velis, found the man’s account to be “unequivocally credible” in a report issued in June. A Chicopee man’s account of sexual abuse when he was an altar boy in the early 1960s by Weldon was investigated for nearly a year by a retired judge. Of those, only one identifies a church official against whom accounts of sexual abuse or misconduct were lodged after his death: former bishop Christopher J. “I would characterize it as a significant addition to our current list,” Dupont said.Īs of today, the names of 20 clergy and one deacon are listed on the diocese’s website as credibly accused. Mark Dupont, the diocese’s spokesman, said he does not know how many members of the clergy will be added to the roster, but signaled that the numbers could surprise people. “If we’re ever going to begin to heal, then the first step is, we have to be honest. “It’s not one hole in the ice, it’s a crack that spreads through the entire unit of the family and friends and the community.
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