By Maureen Hurley and Nancy Ware
On August 14, 2019, the one-year window opened in New York state for victims of sexual abuse to file claims that would otherwise have been barred by the statute of limitations. Within the first 24 hours of the opening, more than 100 claims were filed under the Child Victims Act against priests and the Diocese of Buffalo, far more than any other diocese in the state.
The Pennsylvania grand jury report of 2018 painted a horrifying picture of a Catholic Church more concerned with its reputational risk than the devastating harm to young people. Revelations in our own Diocese of Buffalo several months earlier thrust the diocese into a spiritual, financial, and public relations crisis. This included the CBS News show 60 Minutes featuring the bishop’s former secretary who told of documents removed from the diocese that contained revelations of a priest being returned to active ministry by the current Bishop of Buffalo Richard Malone after substantiated findings of sexual impropriety. In many respects, Buffalo has become Ground Zero of the Church sex abuse scandal in the United States.
In the wake of these revelations, a group of nine lay Catholics formed what we called The Movement to Restore Trust (MRT). Our purpose was to address the diocese’s handling of the sex abuse scandal and to begin the process of healing.
Throughout 2018, some in Buffalo were calling for Bishop Malone to resign, but the bishop has repeatedly stated he intends to stay. The founders of the MRT concluded that our work would need to transcend the term of any individual bishop. It needed to involve a more comprehensive approach, where laity would take an active role in identifying real steps to be taken that would begin the process of restoring trust in a beleaguered diocese.
Our organizing committee represented practicing Catholics in the diocese, several of whom were significant donors to the diocese and its ministries. We are five men and four women, seven of whom were Jesuit-educated, and who represent the fields of law, medicine, victim advocacy, real estate development, and education, from early childhood to university. It was clear that each of us wished to channel our anger and frustration over what was happening in our Church into something constructive. We announced the formation of the MRT on Oct. 31, 2018. With help from John Carr at Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life and Leadership Roundtable, a consulting firm created by prominent Catholic business leaders in the wake of the sex abuse scandal in Boston, we held an opening symposium at Canisius College in Buffalo, in late November 2018. We recruited a panel of speakers to spark a thoughtful discussion of the issues arising out of the sex abuse scandal. Four hundred attended the symposium in person and we estimated another 1,000 watched the various live streams and radio broadcasts of the event.
On November 28, 2018, Canisius College hosted a symposium entitled, Restoring Trust: A Path Forward for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo (above). Facilitated by Canisius College President John J. Hurley, the panel featured the following experts: Margaret Carney, O.S.F., president emerita of St. Bonaventure University; Kerry Robinson, founding executive director of Leadership Roundtable; Matt Malone, S.J., president and editor in chief of America; and Robert Zilliox, a sex abuse survivor, canon lawyer, and diocesan priest. Photo courtesy of WBEN NewsRadio 930AM.
We followed the symposium with a workshop at Canisius 10 days later at which we broke into six working groups, each directed toward a particular issue arising from the sex abuse crisis and the culture within the Catholic Church.
These six groups recruited about 150 lay and religious who worked for the next four months, through holidays and winter weather, to develop a series of recommendations on how the diocese could begin the painful process of restoring trust among its faithful. Most of the volunteers who studied these topics and laid out recommendations were not theologians or canon lawyers, but they did a solid job of sizing up the situation—whether it was the diocese’s handling of sex abuse cases, the transparency in its finances, or the involvement of women and laity in the life of the Church. Their recommended solutions reflect the passion, commitment and wisdom of the laity and for that reason alone, they could not be ignored. This full 68-page compilation of reports is available on the MRT website, as are along with several other items referred to in this article.
Our organizing committee prepared an executive summary of the reports to present to Bishop Malone who recommended the formation of a Joint Implementation Team (JIT) comprised of MRT and diocesan representatives to move the process of reform forward and the JIT began meeting with Leadership Roundtable acting as facilitator. Several good things happened:
We sponsored several listening sessions across the diocese with the bishop so he could hear firsthand the frustrations, concerns, and, yes, the hopes, of the faithful amid so much discouraging news. The bishop revamped the Diocesan Finance Council, appointing a layperson as the new chair of the council and replacing three clergy on the council with three highly qualified lay women.
The Diocesan Review Board, created to determine the credibility of claims against priests, was renamed the Independent Diocesan Review Board to emphasize its independence from diocesan control. Additional investigators were hired to expedite the completion of these investigations.
In the process, the MRT has learned that engaging in co-responsibility between the laity and the Church has challenges. We have different perspectives and work on different schedules. With support from Leadership Roundtable, the MRT has emphasized that restoring trust in the Buffalo Diocese requires immediate action. The church’s record of adapting and adopting change over centuries will not suffice.
Unfortunately, the Diocese took another step backward in September 2019 when it was reported that Bishop Malone had apparently mishandled a new investigation involving a claim of sexual misconduct by a diocesan priest and a seminarian. The salacious details of a possible love triangle involving two diocesan priests and a seminarian pushed the situation in Buffalo to a crisis point. The MRT stepped forward and asked Bishop Malone to resign for the good of the Church in Buffalo. He refused.
In October, the Vatican asked Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio to conduct an apostolic visitation of the Buffalo Diocese. Bishop DiMarzio visited Buffalo three times and interviewed 80 people, including two members of the MRT. His report was submitted to the Vatican before the New York bishops travelled to Rome for their ad limina visit with the Holy Father in mid-November.
Throughout the fall, the MRT waited for news on whether Bishop Malone would resign. In early December, just as this magazine was going to print, the Vatican announced it had accepted the bishop's resignation effective immediately. Local church officials expressed hope that the diocese could then move toward healing. The MRT continued to promote its reform agenda to ensure that these terrible evils within the Church can never happen again.
Maureen Hurley served for 31 years as an intellectual property lawyer and executive for Rich Products Corporation, a $4-billion privately-owned, international, frozen food manufacturer headquartered in Buffalo, NY. She currently serves on the boards of the Catholic Health System, WNY Public Broadcasting, the John R. Oishei Foundation and is a founding member of the Movement to Restore Trust.
Nancy Ware is founder and President of EduKids Early Childhood Centers, providing nationally accredited early childhood education and childcare at 15 locations though out western New York. She currently serves on the boards of Canisius College, WNY Public Broadcasting and is a founding member of the Movement to Restore Trust.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Canisius College.