Clergy abuse support group calls for transparency in Springfield Diocese

By Chris Dettro
Journal Star
March 4, 2015

http://www.pjstar.com/article/20150304/NEWS/150309637

    SPRINGFIELD — A national support group for clergy abuse victims on Wednesday called for more transparency from the Catholic Diocese of Springfield concerning two out-of-state predator priests who spent time in the diocese.

    The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, also wants an explanation as to why six priests ousted from their Chicago parishes in the 1990s appeared in an official Catholic directory for the Springfield Diocese, all with the same Litchfield phone number.

    The group says it isn’t sure those six priests ever were assigned to or spent time in the Springfield Diocese, but it suspects that one or more did.

    The two out-of-state priests are the Rev. Frank R. Martinez Jr. of Iowa and the Rev. James Vincent Fitzgerald of South Dakota, said David Clohessy, director of Chicago-based SNAP.

    “Neither Bishop Thomas Paprocki (leader of the 28-county Springfield Diocese) nor his predecessors have told anyone about them,” Clohessy said at a sidewalk news conference held across the street from the Catholic Pastoral Center in Springfield.

    Martinez was deemed “credibly accused” of child sex abuse by diocesan officials in Davenport, Iowa, in 2008. He later was sent to St. Mary’s Hospital in Decatur, Clohessy said.

    Fitzgerald was sued in 2013 for allegedly assaulting a child in Minnesota and in 2010 for molesting two other children in South Dakota. He worked at St. Joseph Novitiate in Godfrey and from 1994 to 2002 lived at a church facility in Belleville.

    “We are urging Bishop Paprocki to be more forthcoming and honest about predator priests, specifically Fitzgerald and Martinez,” Clohessy said.

    Springfield Diocese spokeswoman Marlene Mulford said it is the responsibility of other dioceses to disclose wrongdoing by either Martinez or Fitzgerald.

    “Neither of the two priests, Father Fitzgerald nor Father Martinez, were our diocesan priests,” she said. “One was from a religious order; the other was from the Diocese of Davenport. It is their community’s responsibility.”

    Fitzgerald was a member of a Washington-based religious order, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

    Clohessy said the names of the six suspended Chicago priests were learned through court documents.

    “In one year in the early 1990s, they all had a phone number that traced to a landline in Litchfield,” he said. “That’s odd at best and worrisome at worst.”

    Mulford said the six Chicago priests “were not our diocesan priests.”

    “To our knowledge, they were not assigned in this diocese,” she said.

    SNAP named the priests as the Revs. David F. Braun, Eugene P. Burns, William J. Cloutier, Norbert J. Maday, Robert E. Mayer and Kenneth C. Runge.

The group believes Maday and Mayer are still alive. Martinez, Fitzgerald and the others are believed to be deceased.