New Jersey Catholic Bishops List Names of Nearly 200 Priests Accused of Abuse

By Rick Rojas
Feb. 13, 2019

Roman Catholic bishops in New Jersey on Wednesday named nearly 200 priests who have been found credibly accused of sexually abusing a child. The disclosure is just the latest reported in recent weeks by dioceses and religious orders across the country as law enforcement officials examine the church’s response to an epidemic of abuse.

As with many of the other lists published, most of the priests identified by the New Jersey bishops are dead, and the accusations involve alleged abuse that happened decades ago.

The list of names included Theodore McCarrick, the former cardinal who stands to be one of the highest-profile Catholic figures in modern times to be defrocked, and a parish priest who was the first to be criminally charged as part of the New Jersey attorney general’s investigation into clergy abuse.

The bishops in New Jersey have followed dozens of their colleagues in the United States in deciding to publish the names of suspected abusers after a grand jury report in Pennsylvania last summer outlined seven decades of accusations and inflamed broader tensions in the church over its handling of abuse.

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