CHICAGO (IL)
Sun Times
March 8, 2019
By Robert Herguth
While serving as a priest in the Chicago area in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, James M. Ray engaged in disturbing conduct, according to allegations contained in church records, from having children sit on his lap while he had an erection to grabbing a boy’s penis and helping a disabled man masturbate in an airport bathroom.
The Catholic church didn’t kick him out of the priesthood but in the 1990s moved him into a supervised setting to live away from children — at the Cardinal Stritch Retreat House adjacent to the Mundelein Seminary where, in 1975, Ray had been ordained.
He wasn’t alone in living at the north suburban retreat center, which the Archdiocese of Chicago for years used to house troubled priests, as well as for spiritual gatherings for prelates and the public. Church records show Ray and eight others were staying there in 2008, a year before he left and quit the clergy.
The last of the priests accused of sexual abuse there were moved in 2013. But the stigma lasted.
The archdiocese — the Catholic church’s arm in Cook and Lake counties, overseen by Cardinal Blase Cupich — recently changed the name of the Cardinal Stritch Retreat House. It’s now called the Joseph and Mary Retreat House.
The church’s explanation for the change, outlined on the retreat center’s Facebook page, says: “We want the name to reflect a more inclusive retreatant, moms, dads, young adults, grandparents as well as maintaining a spiritual renewal place for priests” and deacons.
“We feel that the name Joseph and Mary” — Jesus’ stepfather and mother, according to the Christian Bible — “reflects that new mission of inclusive spiritual renewal. We have made many new improvements to reflect the needs of our retreatants.”
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