BishopAccountability.org
	Mass. Group Says Abusive Priest List Falls Short By Mark Pratt Boston Globe August 2, 2011 http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/08/04/mass_group_says_abusive_priest_list_falls_short/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Local+news A coalition of church watchdog groups and clergy abuse victims protested Thursday what they said is Cardinal Sean O'Malley's refusal to disclose the names of members of religious orders accused of abuse while working in the Roman Catholic Boston Archdiocese. Members of BishopAccountability.org, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, and other groups said in a demonstration in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross that failure to disclose the names endangers children and misleads the public. BishopAccountability.org said Thursday that the archdiocese's list will not include the names of Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans and members of other Roman Catholic orders accused of abuse while working within the archdiocese. The religious orders are secretive and have not released the names themselves, said Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org. "What troubles us is that Cardinal O'Malley knows that if he doesn't list these order priests, then nobody will," she said. Other American dioceses have included order priests in their lists of accused abusive church employees, she said. The archdiocese is in the process of compiling a list of priests and church employees who have been accused of molesting children that will eventually be made public. Mary Jane Doherty, chair of the archdiocese's review board, said last week that the list is "very close" to being completed but did not name a specific release date. While not specifically addressing the claim that the list will not include the names of members of religious orders, the archdiocese said in a statement Thursday that compiling the list is "complex." "There is a continued commitment on the part of the archdiocese to augment our present policy in the area of disclosing additional information about credibly accused clergy," the statement said. "At this time, substantial progress has been made to facilitate the publication of names but it is complex and our work is ongoing," it said. Some of the religious order members worked as parish priests, some as teachers in Catholic schools, or in other capacities. The coalition also released a list of 82 religious order members who have previously been publicly accused of abuse. Many have been criminally charged, named in civil lawsuits or disciplined by church authorities. Doyle said O'Malley is claiming the order priests were not accountable to archdiocese authorities, but Doyle maintains that according to canon law, they were, even if they did not work directly for the archdiocese. "No matter what these order priests did in the archdiocese, the bishop remains the authority over their work," she said. "It's also a matter of common decency," she said. The archdiocese has said compiling the list involves issues of due process for priests who have never been convicted of a crime. Doyle said her group is trying to hold O'Malley to a promise made in March 2009 letter, when he wrote he was considering improving policy on releasing information about accused clergy. A year later, minutes from an archdiocesan meeting indicated the list was being compiled and would have 155 names, including 40 previously undisclosed names. BishopAccountability.org said it now has more than 240 names of priests or other religious workers who have substantive abuse accusations against them and worked at some point in Boston. The abuse crisis erupted in the archdiocese in 2002, then spread worldwide. O'Malley was appointed bishop of Boston in 2003.
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