In a ruling a week ago, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court ordered the release of a grand jury report investigating Clergy child sexual abuse in six Roman Catholic dioceses.
The grand jury was convened in April 2016 to review the incidents of Clergy abuse in the Dioceses of Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton since 1948.
The State Attorney General wanted to release the results in June, but was blocked by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as it heard objections from some Priests and others who claim their constitutional rights to a good reputation and the due process of law would be violated.
On July 26, the Supreme Court ordered a “redacted” version of the report to be issued sometime between today and Aug. 14, with the names of those challenging the report deleted. In the meantime, a court-appointed Master is reviewing petitioners’ requests for redactions.
The report, then, whenever it is released, will not be complete.
Under the Supreme Court order, portions will be blacked out until the justices hear arguments from petitioners on what information they want to be excluded. Those arguments have been scheduled for a hearing in September.
All the Bishops of the Dioceses investigated by the grand jury have received unredacted copies of the report in advance. They are bound by grand jury secrecy until release of the report.
Those who read the report, said Bishop Persico, the only bishop to testify before the grand jury, "will see that the report is very sobering, that the report contains a lot of explicit details — some of it they may actually find shocking in the details."
It is noteworthy that Bishop Persico presided over a sweeping internal investigation of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Diocese of Erie. And in a move unprecedented nationwide, he released more than 60 names of clergy and laypeople accused of abuse or other misconduct in the 13-county diocese.
He was likewise the first of the six Bishops in the affected Dioceses to state that he would not try to block the release of the grand jury report. The Bishop also stated that the Diocese of Erie would not fund any effort to force a redaction of the report or to block the report.
"The position of the Diocese is that we want the grand jury report to be released," Bishop Persico said.
Before being named Bishop of the Erie diocese, Persico was Vicar General and acting-Chancellor for the Diocese of Greensburg, which is also part of the grand jury investigation.
In addition to releasing the names, Bishop Persico has been unique in another respect — as the only Bishop in the six Dioceses who testified in person before the grand jury during its two-year investigation.
Bishop Persico initially submitted the grand jury a written statement, as did the other five Bishops, all separately. The Bishop said he then accepted Attorney General Josh Shapiro's invitation to testify before the panel of 23 grand jurors.
Shapiro made the invitation after Bishop Persico released the names of accused priests and laypeople on April 6.
The Bishop testified in May.
Commenting on the redacted report which will be issued between now and August 14 or thereabouts, Bishop Persico said: It's not an easy read.”
As I have reported in an earlier post, the grand jury report will be devastating to the Church in the graphic details about the horrific (sadly, I have been using this word much too often lately) abuse which children and youngsters suffered not only at the hands of predator-Clergy but also by those Bishops and others in authority who engaged in a systematic cover up within their respective Dioceses.
What the State Attorney General has done in Pennsylvania will, I predict, serve to inspire the same kind of statewide investigation of Clergy abuse in other parts of the country.
I fear that Pennsylvania’s shocking findings will be repeated, if not surpassed, in other Dioceses nationwide.
The clock is ticking on a time-bomb for the American Church and the Bishops in this country.
Let’s be honest.
Pope Francis has been terribly ineffective and remarkably callous in his silence in the face of the scandals involving former-Cardinal McCarrick as well as the Bishops who likely knew of his abuse and said and did nothing.
The Pennsylvania grand jury report will shake the foundation of the Church in America to its core.
Pope Francis must act now.
He is about to get a taste of the anger and disgust of the people of Ireland for the years of scandal and cover up which took place in that once-staunchly Catholic country. Strangely, Pope Francis has been absent as Irish Catholics have suffered the tales of abuse and secrecy which infected the Church for decades upon decades.
There was a glimmer of hope when the Pope moved to hold the entire Conference of Bishops in Chile accountable for their misdeeds in not acting to protect those entrusted to their care.
In response, all the Bishops in Chile offered their resignations to the Holy Father.
Why haven’t the Bishops in Ireland, why haven’t the Bishops in the United States been called by the Holy Father to the same accountability as the Chilean Bishops?
The Pope’s recent excursion into the inadmissability of the death penalty notwithstanding, the "800 pound gorilla" of Bishops’ complicity in the sexual abuse scandals remains in the room.
Thus far (to paraphrase Bishop Persico), the Pope’s actions have not “been an easy read”.
Things at the Vatican need to change.
They must.
They better.
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