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Chicago Archdiocese Fulfills Dying Man's Last Wish: To Get His Priest Abuse File
By Dennis Robaugh
The Chicago Archdiocese granted a dying man’s final wish, bringing him a copy of the report on the priest who sexually abused him in the 1950s. On Friday, the Archdiocese dispatched its Victims Advocate to Hines Veterans Hospital and the bedside of Rick Springer, a taxicab driver and activist who spent years trying to hold the Catholic Church accountable for the misdeeds of its priests. NBC Chicago’s Mary Ann Ahern, who has covered the church and sex abuse scandal for years, learned of the church’s effort to connect with Springer. As he lay dying, the advocate read the file to him and allowed Springer to hold the document. He died Saturday afternoon at the age of 76. A memorial ceremony will be held on Monday. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the abuse and how it’s affected my life,” Springer told Medill News Service in 2010. He grew up on the North Side, in Rogers Park, and began attending a neighborhood Catholic church after his parents divorce in 1945 even though he was raised a Lutheran. “I was looking, trying to find something to hold onto, a surrogate family,” he said, and his best friend brought him to Mass. “I can tell you that it was a magic show that really impressed me. I embraced that religion right then and there,” Springer wrote on the website FireThePope.com. “I really felt that Jesus was right there in that church with those people singing the hymns in Latin. The priest was changing water and wine into the blood of Christ, and the bread into the body of Christ.” He became an altar boy. He wanted to be a priest, and he entered the seminary. But one recurring thought got in his way — girls. All the teen could think about was girls. Seeking the counsel of a priest, the man brought him to the parish rectory. Under the guise of giving him a physical exam to determine whether he was suitable for the priesthood, he molested Springer. “He heard my confession. I remember I was kneeling before him on that hard floor, and he was sitting in his chair, listening. When we were through with the confession, he absolved me. He said, ‘I want to demonstrate something with you. I want to see if you are holy enough in the eyes of God.’ He told me to take my pants down and I obeyed. I just obeyed,” Springer wrote, describing the abuse. “I don’t even know how to describe how I felt. It’s almost like I was up on the ceiling and I was looking down. This can’t be happening, but it is happening, and it can’t be, but he’s a priest, and I can’t say no, yet I know it’s wrong, and yet he’s a priest, and it was just back and forth, and it was horrible. “I was 14 when it happened. And when he finished, he stood up and he pronounced my body holy enough to go on to study to be a priest. And then he said that he would want to see me again, and then we would do some more counseling.” When he reported the incident to his superiors at the seminary, he was told the Archdiocese would be told. But he was ignored and told to leave the seminary. Disillusioned, he became “an around the clock drinker.” “You might say I got my Ph.D. in alcohol,” he told Medill. And he drank the memory away. He bounced from job to job. In the 1980s, he got sober. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous and learned a different spirituality. While delivering pizzas in Evanston, the memory of his abuse returned with a vengeance. He was unable to keep his life steady. Then he joined the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and became one of its most active volunteers and support group leaders. “It takes me out of me,” he told Medill. “It takes me out of my self-pity.” Springer found work as a cab driver in Chicago, and was still driving well into his 70s. Passengers in his taxi would sometimes get one of his pamphlets with information about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The fliers were printed on what looked like dollar bills. He hoped people would drop them in church collection baskets instead of real cash, delivering the message that donations would stop until the Catholic Church came clean about its legacy of abusive priests. “He could have chosen to stay trapped in shame, secrecy, self-blame and hopelessness,” said Barbara Blaine, president of SNAP. “Instead, he’s decided to do all he can to help heal the wounded and protect the vulnerable.” He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago, according to NBC Chicago. Through his dying days, he believed the church wasn’t doing enough to go public with information about abusive priests and cleanse itself of its shame. At the end, he was visited by many friends, including Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, according to NBC Chicago. She was on the National Lay Review Board for priest abuse. Friends appealed to Cardinal Francis George and Archbishop Blase Cupich to fulfill the dying man’s request to see the file on the priest who molested him. That priest died years ago, never acknowledging what he’d done.
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