Cardinal Dolan Knew of Reports against Suspended Milwaukee Priest but Left Him Working with Children

By Peter Isely
SNAP Wisconsin
April 19, 2013

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Cardinal Timothy Dolan, when Archbishop of Milwaukee, knew of concerns by parents and teachers about Fr. Robert Marsicek

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According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel religion reporter Annysa Johnson, “Two Milwaukee archbishops had been made aware of complaints over the years, Archbishop Jerome Listecki in June 2012 and then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan – now a cardinal and archbishop of New York – in 2005. Yet there appears to have been no attempt to remove Marsicek from the two Catholic schools he served until Wauwatosa Police banned him from the schools while they investigated the latest complaint.” (More details can be found at the Wauwatosa Patch story

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Dolan ran the Milwaukee diocese from 2001 to 2009.

Victim/survivors have long maintained that Dolan, who refused to name known religious order clerics in the Milwaukee Archdiocese who had assaulted children, was leaving sex offenders like Marsicek in ministry.

Over half of all priests staffing schools and parishes of the Milwaukee archdiocese are religious order clergy.

Marsicek was suspended from ministry last month following a call to police from a teacher at the Pius X grade school for “inappropriate behavior” with a child. Since then, it has been learned

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Marsicek was also under investigation by authorities since last May for child sexual assaults originating from his time as a pastor of a California Catholic church. Other victims of Marsicek are coming forward, dating as far back as the 1970?s.

Marsicek was appointed by Dolan to run Pius X parish. Marcieck also was placed in charge of Mother of Good Council parish. Both churches operate grade schools.

The latest revelations concerning Dolan follow a February deposition

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in the Milwaukee Archdiocese bankruptcy case stemming from fraud cases against church officials for concealing and transferring known child sex offenders.

Dolan, according to court documents filed in the bankruptcy case over the past year, paid off over a dozen of Milwaukee’s most notorious clergy child molesters to quietly settle in new communities and seek employment outside the priesthood, although he publicly denied doing so in 2006. Court

testimony also reveals that Dolan operated a “mediation” program designed, it now appears, to mislead victims about the history of priest offenders in order to prevent fraud filings. And Dolan moved tens of millions of dollars off the books of the archdiocese before the church filed for the bankruptcy.