UNITED STATES/VATICAN CITY
Boston Globe
Top Vatican prosecutor failed to report abuser
By Michael Rezendes
GLOBE STAFF NOVEMBER 23, 2014
A prominent American Jesuit recently named by Pope Francis to prosecute priests accused of sexually abusing minors under Church law was himself one of several Catholic officials who failed to stop a notorious abusive priest now serving a 25-year prison sentence, legal documents show.
The Rev. Robert J. Geisinger, named in September as the pope’s “Promoter of Justice,” was the second highest ranking official among the Chicago Jesuits in the 1990s when leaders were facing multiple abuse complaints against the Rev. Donald J. McGuire, a globe-trotting priest who was close to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. But the Jesuits failed to notify police or prevent McGuire from continuing to molest minors.
Documents examined by the Globe, most of them Church records produced during lawsuits filed by McGuire’s victims, show that Geisinger had detailed knowledge of the complaints against McGuire as early as 1995 and advised officials in Chicago on how to discipline McGuire as late as August of 2002, when they were still keeping the complaints secret, and Geisinger had been promoted to a position in Rome.
McGuire was finally convicted in 2006 by a Wisconsin jury of molesting two boys who had notified civil authorities.
“It’s astonishing that, for such a high profile, sensitive position, the Vatican wouldn’t want someone whose background is unassailable, in the sense that there shouldn’t even be questions raised,” said Philip F. Lawler, a noted Catholic writer and the editor of Catholic World News, who has been critical of the church’s handling of the sex abuse crisis.
Geisinger, reached at his Rome office, declined to comment on the role he played as canon lawyer to McGuire’s supervisors, or on the contents of the court documents, insisting that he is bound by confidentiality rules that apply to canon lawyers, or lawyers who hold degrees in Church law. …
Lawler and his wife, Leila, housed one of McGuire’s victims during the 1999-2000 school year when the victim was an eighth-grader at the Trivium School, a small Catholic school in Lancaster. Both complained about McGuire’s behavior during his visits with the boy, but neither the school nor the Chicago Province took action to stop him.
“The boy was not abused while he was here but he was abused after he left us, after we had communicated our fears to [McGuire’s] Jesuit superiors,’’ Lawler said in a 2012 Globe interview. “That makes me livid.” …
Said Terence McKiernan, founder of the advocacy group bishopaccountability.org: “Do you really want to pick someone who is actually in the paper trail of one of the most egregious cases that the Jesuits have ever handled?”
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