NEWARK (NJ)
Politico [Arlington VA]
January 23, 2025
By Dustin Racioppi
Seton Hall University is vigorously defending its new president after POLITICO reported he was implicated in a secret report on sexual abuse.
The findings about Monsignor Joseph Reilly prompted calls for his resignation in recent weeks from state lawmakers, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy urged the Catholic university to release its internal report on Reilly.
But in a university-wide email on Thursday, the chair of Seton Hall’s Board of Regents said the university’s governing board “continues to stand by” its president.
“Recent news stories have falsely and unfairly portrayed him,” Board of Regents Chair Hank D’Alessandro said.
Seton Hall did not respond to a message asking what specific news stories were false. It has also not sought a correction to POLITICO’s reporting.
Reilly was not accused of abuse himself. But investigators in 2019 recommended, pursuant to a responsive action plan the school’s governing body adopted, that Reilly be removed as a seminary leader and member of university boards, according to interviews and documents previously reviewed by POLITICO.
The university hired two law firms in 2018 to review the “influence and actions” of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was the archbishop of Newark before being named to lead the diocese in Washington, D.C. That followed decades of allegations that he had sexually abused children and seminarians. Since then, he has faced allegations across multiple states, and was stripped of his ministry.
The Vatican issued a 449-page report in 2020 that faulted multiple church leaders, including former Pope John Paul II, for allowing McCarrick to rise to the top rungs of Catholicism. He’s the first cardinal to be laicized — or removed from the priesthood — for sex crimes.
Investigators hired by Seton Hall presented their findings verbally to the university Board of Regents in August 2019 and followed up that September with a written memo, which was reviewed by POLITICO.
It said that Reilly, a former secretary for McCarrick, once went to McCarrick’s beach house but — because he had heard rumors of the archbishop sharing a bed with seminarians — made sure he stayed in a downstairs bedroom. The memo also said Reilly made sure seminarians didn’t visit the beach house alone.
Reilly became rector of the university’s College Seminary at St. Andrew’s Hall in 2002 and then, in 2012, rector and dean of Seton Hall’s Immaculate Conception Seminary, a high-ranking position that oversees the preparation of men for priesthood.
That year, he investigated a student complaint of sexual assault “in house” and did not report it or follow the school and federal Title IX policies and procedures, according to the memo. It said the seminarian who was accused of the abuse was dismissed, but the university was not alerted to issues that led to his departure and he continued as a student.
The memo also said Reilly dismissed a seminarian in 2012 who was an alleged victim of sexual abuse without investigating the incident or escalating the matter, a violation of university policy.
A Responsive Action Plan, which the university approved in August 2019, said any employee or board member “with knowledge of sexual misconduct claims involving ICS seminarians” could not continue to serve on any board or any leadership position if they had failed to report the conduct or take other actions required under the school’s sexual harassment policies.
After the memo was issued, the university formed a special task force committee to carry out disciplinary actions.
In his statement, D’Alessandro said the board “reviewed the findings, and with the University, approved the implementation of personnel changes and improvements to the Seminary.” After that, he said the board “enthusiastically supported Monsignor Reilly.”
Reilly took a yearlong sabbatical in 2022 and returned in 2023 as a vice provost.
“The Board has stood by and continues to stand by Monsignor and trusts his proven record of effective leadership. He is a faithful servant and the right person to lead Seton Hall,” D’Alessandro said.
“As the Seton Hall motto says, Hazard Zet Forward, and so we shall move forward under his leadership,” he said. “I look forward to Monsignor Joseph Reilly leading our beloved University for many years to come.”