Pastor under Police Investigation in Wauwatosa Illustrates Archdiocese Control over Religious Orders

By John Pilmaier
SNAP Wisconsin
March 31, 2013

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Pastor under police investigation in Wauwatosa illustrates archdiocese control over religious orders

Over half of clerics working in archdiocese belong to such orders, one of the highest concentrations in the US

Statement by John Pilmaier, SNAP Wisconsin Director

CONTACT: 414.336.8575

The removal from ministry Friday of Fr. Bob Marsicek, Pastor of Pius X parish in Wauwatosa, by Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki illustrates perfectly and conclusively that the archdiocese has control over religious order clerics.  Marsicek, a member of the Salvatorians, is under a current police investigation and has been ordered to stay away from Pius X parish and its school. The Salvatorians have their international headquarters in Milwaukee.

Why is this important?

Because over half the clerics working in archdiocesan parishes, schools and ministries are members of religious orders like the one to which Marsicek belongs. In fact, three of Marsicek’s fellow Salvatorians have been convicted of child sex crimes in Milwaukee: Fr. Dennis Pecore, Fr. Simon Palanthingal and Br. John Rice.

The Milwaukee Archdiocese has traditionally been a sanctuary for religious order sex offender clerics, actively concealing their criminal histories.  A particularly glaring example was the notorious pedophile nun, Sr. Norma Giannini, a Sister of Mercy, who was convicted in Milwaukee of child sex crimes in 2008, even though the archdiocese had investigated and determined Giannini had committed multiple acts of child sex assault against several boys years earlier as the principal of St. Patrick’s Catholic Grade School on the South Side.

Additionally, an alarming number of the alleged offenders of the 570 victim cases currently filed into Milwaukee Federal Bankruptcy Court appear to be religious order clerics.  According to attorneys for at least 350 of those 570 victims, the majority of 75 clerics yet to be publically identified as offenders are members of religious orders.

Even though other bishops have done so, Archbishop Listecki refuses to identify religious order clerics determined to have harmed children and place them on the archdiocese list of offenders. If the cleric committed the crime in the Milwaukee archdiocese or somewhere else, as long as that cleric has worked here, he or she must be placed on such a registry.

And Listecki still will not order the release of internal church documents related to crimes and the cover up of these crimes by the religious order offenders who are or were under the jurisdiction of the archdiocese.

As long as likely half the known clerical sex offenders from the Milwaukee Archdiocese are not named by Listecki and the documents related to their criminal activity are not released to the public, there can be no just resolution of the current bankruptcy proceedings.

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 23 years and have more than 10,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Visit us at SNAPnetwork.org and SnapWisconsin.com.