About Those Hinky Jesuits

I've got to admire the public-relations job Bp Daly's people in Spokane have done in responding to press reports about the Jesuit sex offenders who lived at Cardinal Bea House at Gonzaga University, without university administrators or Spokane law enforcement being notified. As far as I can see, the bottom line is that nobody in Daly's scope of authority is guilty of any sort of misconduct, and they in fact seem to have worked behind the scenes since 2015 to get the problem out of Spokane, which they did.

Yet once the issue came to light, they were able to make it clear that on one hand, it hadn't happened on Daly's watch, Daly had in fact worked to fix it -- but maybe more important, the response didn't directly stir up more bad publicity for the Jesuits or Cardinal Cupich, both of whom were culpable for the situation. Again, I hope this will help Bp Daly prosper in his career.

But let's look at this story, which came out in the left-wing press. A note at the bottom says that one of the editors was Narda Zacchino, a hard leftist from the 1960s married to Robert Scheer, another aging hard leftist and Castro sympathizer. This should give observers pause over the grist Catholic scandals provide for totalitarian propaganda -- even in the 1930s, a Nazi anti-Catholic talking point was sex abuse by priests.

It's also worth noting that the problem the Jesuits had with the former Oregon Province has gone unmentioned, as far as I can tell, in the books covering the First Crisis -- it doesn't appear in Engel's The Rite of Sodomy, for instance. In 2008-2009, though, both the Oregon Province and the Diocese of Fairbanks declared bankruptcy as a result of hundreds of lawsuits for Alaska abuse.

The abusive Jesuits at Cardinal Bea House were part of the Oregon Province’s outsized problem with sexual misconduct. The province had 92 Jesuits accused of sexual abuse, by far the most of any province in the country, according to data we compiled from church records, a database maintained by advocates for sex abuse victims, and information released earlier this month by the Jesuits. In addition, about 80 percent of accused abusers worked in Native communities in the Oregon Province.

The story focuses on the most egregious case, Fr James Poole, who had been sleeping with Alaska Native girls and women since his arrival in the state.

In a 1960 letter to a Jesuit official, local Jesuit leader Segundo Llorente fretted over Poole’s conduct. Poole regularly had long, one-on-one conversations with young girls about sex, Llorente wrote. Llorente’s letter speculated that Poole, “has a fixation on sex; an obsession; some sort of mental aberration that makes him see sex everywhere. Some think that may be (sic) he is projecting outwardly what is eating him inwardly … he is deliberately placing himself at all times in dangerous situations.”

There might have been some personal insight in those words. The names of both Llorente and the Alaska church official with whom he was corresponding, Father Paul O’Connor, appeared on a list released by the Fairbanks Diocese in 2009 of priests accused of sexual misconduct.

The pattern here is familiar because it's so often repeated: priests and religious whose conduct is extreme and clearly recognized by superiors, but tolerated and in fact enabled, at least in part because the superiors are guilty themselves. At minimum, a superior who takes serious action is subject to blackmail under such circumstances. But it seems to me that one way to avoid a problem with octogenarian offenders living in comfortable retirement at Jesuit facilities would be to laicize them when the crimes come to light and turn them over to civil authorities.

A National Public Radio report on other Alaska abuse cases raises a case that Bp Lopes may find relevant to the "Gilbertines" in Calgary. Fr George Endal, SJ, met an Army veteran and drifter in 1959 who had briefly been a Trappist, Joseph Lundowski. Endal quickly designated Lundowski a "brother" and put him in charge of the boys' dormitory at a mission school. Several witnesses observed Lundowski's misconduct with boys, but Lundowski routinely followed Endal to new assighments. Correspondence took place among Church officials for more than a decade over what to do with Lundowski, who continued to call himself "Brother" but had no official status. No action was taken.

Endal, meanwhile, asked that Lundowski be made a deacon; Church officials dithered. Endal unofficially made Lundowski a "deacon" anyhow. A bishop later officially endorsed the move. Finally in 1975, Endal had Lundowski flown out of his territory in response to yet another complaint, but Endal himself continued to abuse children. By 2004, at least 28 men filed lawsuits against the Jesuit province and the Diocese of Fairbanks due to abuse by Lundowski and Endal.

Bp Lopes, shut the "Gilbertines" down.