Rev. Andrew Greeley, Priest Outspoken on Catholic Hierarchy, Dies at 85
By Corky Siemaszko
The Rev. Andrew Greeley, the outspoken Catholic priest and newspaper columnist who ripped his own church for covering up the child sex abuse scandal, died Wednesday. He was 85. Greeley died in his sleep at his Chicago apartment in the swanky John Hancock Center, his spokeswoman June Rosner said. The popular priest had been in declining health for last five years after fracturing his skull in a freak accident when his jacket snagged on a taxi cab door and he was pulled to the pavement. "He served the church all those years with a prophetic voice and with unfailing dedication," his niece Elizabeth Durkin said. A Windy City native and a cleric cut from a liberal liturgical cloth, Greeley was a writing machine who cranked out everything from religious tracts and sociological studies to books on Irish history over a five-decade span. Greeley was one of the first to recognize that the Catholic Church was losing its American flock - and he blamed the priests not the people. "Sometimes I think that we as priests and bishops have done everything we possibly could to drive away the laity during the last 20 years," Greeley wrote in 1987. Greeley also was a researcher at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and taught sociology at the University of Arizona. But Greeley made his biggest mark - and his millions - with racy best-selling novels like "The Cardinal Sins." And when he wasn't writing mysteries, Greeley wrote a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times — that also ran in other newspapers like the Daily News — and it navigated the treacherous waters between religion and politics. Despite all the attention, Greeley never put on airs. He rooted for the Chicago Cubs, Bears and Bulls. He considered himself a regular guy who sometimes celebrated Mass. "I'm a priest," he wrote in his 1986 memoir, Confessions of a Parish Priest. "Not a priest-sociologist or a priest-journalist, or a priest-novelist, or any multiple variation of those hyphenates. I'm a priest, a parish priest." And yet, Greeley also could be a harsh critic of the church he loved and served his entire life. When the pedophile priest scandal broke, he broke ranks with his more cautious clerical brethren and criticized the hierarchy. In "Priests: A Calling in Crisis," Greeley wrote that if the Catholic Church goes "down the drain" it will be because of the "incompetence, stupidity, and clerical culture — all enemies from within." Greeley was also a scathing critic of the Bush Administration and some of his essays were collected in a book entitled, "A Stupid, Unjust, And Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007." Greeley also put his millions to good use. When the Archdiocese of Chicago refused — without explanation — his offer of $1 million to create a foundation to help inner-city Catholic kids, Greeley went ahead at started one of his own that doled out dough to some 80 mostly minority Catholic schools in Chicago. Contact: csiemaszko@nydailynews.com
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