Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich urged the Illinois attorney general on Thursday to provide information about newly uncovered cases of clergy sexual abuse that were included in a statewide investigative report, saying he would gladly add the names on his list of credibly accused priests if the claims were substantiated.
In his first interview since the report was released Tuesday, Cupich expressed surprise that the 125 new cases involved some priests he had never heard of. He voiced dismay that the attorney general's office hadn't forwarded the new claims to the Archdiocese of Chicago to look into, as it had done during the five-year investigation.
In the report, investigators found that more than 450 Catholic clergy in Illinois' six dioceses had sexually abused nearly 2,000 children since 1950, making clear the problem was far worse than the hierarchy had acknowledged in 2018 at the start of the state's review. The archdiocese of Chicago, the third largest in the United States, had reported 68 abusive clergy in 2018.
"I can assure the public this: If these cases are substantiated and we're given the information of how it was , we will put them on our website," he said, speaking in the courtyard of the Pontifical North American College, the American seminary in Rome where Cupich stays when in town on Vatican business.
Cupich said he would be willing to refuse to let priests of noncompliant orders work in his archdiocese, as recommended by the report, though he said he'd"rather use the carrot than the stick, because we do need these religious orders."
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