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	Cardinal's Point Man on Abuse Chicago Archdiocese's Top Official in Dealing with Sex Cases Is Also an Ex-Caseworker Who Takes Job Personally By Manya A. Brachear Chicago Tribune June 12, 2006 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0606120166 jun12,1,736949.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed The crisis began with the arrest of Rev. Daniel McCormack, accused of sexually abusing two boys. Then came allegations that the church did nothing to stop him. More boys came forward with allegations. Angry parishioners stopped going to mass and demanded answers from Cardinal Francis George--answers he did not have. As the situation spun out of the cardinal's control, Jimmy Lago, chancellor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, proposed an unprecedented solution. In early February, Lago insisted that the archdiocese open itself to scrutiny by giving outside investigators unlimited access to confidential files and personnel. The request caught the cardinal by surprise. "He didn't obviously know where I was going with this," Lago said later. In his characteristic gruff tone, he continued: "He doesn't expect me to tell him what he wants to hear. That's never been our deal. Our deal has been I tell him what he needs to know, and he makes up his own mind." George agreed to the plan, and the findings released five weeks later revealed more than 30 instances in which church employees disregarded red flags--egregious errors that might not have come to light had it not been for Lago. Even victims advocates were thankful, though they wished the action had been taken far earlier. As chancellor, Lago is, in many ways, the cardinal's right-hand man. Overseeing more than a dozen departments--including evangelism, finances and schools--he is one of the most influential laymen in the nation's Catholic hierarchy and the most powerful parishioner appointed by the cardinal in his 2.3 million-member flock. Although Lago has always tried to stay behind the scenes, in the wake of the McCormack scandal he has taken center stage as the church's point man for sexual-abuse complaints. Everyone who handles allegations now reports directly to the chancellor's office. With the advice of a committee made up of concerned citizens and experts, he hopes to launch a wave of reforms that will better protect children and keep a watchful eye on priests suspected of molesting them. "His instincts are correct, and his knowledge is complete," George said of Lago, a former child-abuse caseworker who in the 1970s helped launch the first wave of reforms to curb child abuse. "His first instinct is not to protect the church but protect children at risk," said child-welfare consultant Ron Davidson. But critics say Lago is hamstrung. Victims advocates question why the chancellor did not intervene sooner in the McCormack case and complain that Lago is nothing more than the cardinal's puppet. Lago said he regrets that he was on vacation when McCormack was first arrested and that he was not in the loop when a school principal came forward in 1999 with the first allegation against the priest. But he does not apologize for being an insider who has earned the cardinal's confidence. "I asked for it," he said. "I'm convinced what we're doing is absolutely the right thing. The advantage I have is I don't have to persuade the cardinal archbishop of Chicago to trust me or trust the process. I'm there." Colleagues and family say Lago (pronounced lah-GO) got there through hard work and a natural-born tendency to lead. Born in 1946, Lago was formally named Jimmy, not James, by his parents. He was born 90 minutes after his twin brother, Timmy. In the back yard of the family's home in Maine, Lago recruited neighborhood children for sandlot baseball games. Religion and social justice As teens, the brothers attended a boarding school run by nuns who spoke French in the mornings and English in the afternoons. Timmy Lago said the nuns left an indelible mark by modeling the relationship between religion and social justice. At DePaul University, Lago studied philosophy and met Maria Aguillera, a fellow philosophy major who would become his wife and the mother of his twin sons, Colin and Adrian. Inspired by the heightened social conscience of the 1960s, Lago joined the late Cesar Chavez's movement to protect migrant farmworkers after he graduated. In 1975, he received a master's degree in social work and served as a caseworker in Winnebago County, where he worked to call attention to child abuse in affluent families. When Illinois' six Catholic bishops launched the Catholic Conference in 1976 to sell their agenda to state legislators, they invited Lago to lead the charge. Lago, who said he never aspired to be a priest or imagined working for the church, agreed to stay for two years. But the church, he soon found, was a vehicle to work for causes he cared about. He would stay in the job for two decades. In the early 1990s, he helped push through legislation that forced a flooded child-welfare system to delegate child protection to the private sector, allowing wards of the state to be cared for in licensed private homes. John Goad, former head of Cook County investigations for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, still remembers his first encounter with Lago at a hearing in his first week in that job. Lago excoriated DCFS for failing children. "I can't tell you I enjoyed the experience at the time," Goad said. "But it was useful to hear that kind of perspective from somebody who had been around the system." Earlier this year, Lago hired Goad to identify weaknesses in the church's system and help train clergy and educators. "He is visibly upset by the idea that kids would get hurt by people who ought to be responsible for their care," Goad said. In 1996, Lago became executive director of Catholic Charities, the largest social-welfare organization in the Midwest. In that role, too, he demanded reforms that would encourage private agencies like his own to make adoption of state wards a priority over profits from foster care. Lago's predecessor as chancellor was Auxiliary Bishop Tom Paprocki--until 1983, church law said one had to be a priest to be a chancellor. When the cardinal named Lago to the position in 2000, George reorganized the office, transferring the administrative duties of three other ecclesiastical offices to the chancellor and spreading clerical duties around other departments. Davidson said he was not surprised that the chancellor would respond to the recent abuse crisis by seeking transparency because that was the approach he used to help right the wrongs at Maryville Academy when reports of abuses surfaced in 2002. Lago also brings the perspective of a father to his job. "In some ways, not enough caring attention has been or is being paid to the parents of abused children, who must feel enormous guilt, sadness and anger at not having been able to protect their children," Lago said, adding that the crimes are often unpreventable. `Special protective concern' "Parenthood, I believe, hard-wires a special protective concern and set of alerts to harm that I believe are unique to parents. I feel that way toward my children even today." Barbara Blaine, founder of the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, said she appreciates Lago's compassion and sensitivity. "What's unfortunate is the position he's in," Blaine said. "He's in a system that doesn't empower him to really do what's necessary to help the victims." Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul victims attorney, said Lago's expertise is wasted as long as he works for the church. "If he was guiding the cardinal, given his knowledge and sophistication, those things would never have happened," Anderson said. Church insiders say Lago's loyalty to the cardinal is what appealed to George when he hired him six years ago. Lago is also devoted to the church and its mission. He rarely misses the first Sunday mass at Ascension Catholic Church in Oak Park. Ascension's pastor, Rev. Larry McNally, said it is not faith or job experience that most qualifies Lago for his new role. "Here's a parent in charge of this now, and he knows no one messes with Jimmy's kids," McNally said. "As a father he's going to be protecting the archdiocese's children. I think he's the right man for the job." mbrachear@tribune.com
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