Coughlin Worked With Chicago’s Fallen Priests

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In a May 1999 letter to Wisconsin prison officials, Coughlin outlined the Chicago Archdiocese systems for care and monitoring of priests accused of abuse, and he said,“we would be pleased to receive Norbert Maday into the Archdiocese of Chicago system, outlined above. We would also accept financial responsibility for his maintenance ... this would relieve the State of Wisconsin from the financial burden of caring for Maday.”

In a deposition given in January to lawyers for abuse victims, George said, “I have never seen this before ... I didn’t approve this letter.” The archdiocese provided Roll Call with an August 2007 letter in which George told Wisconsin officials that he felt “the situation has changed” and the church could not care for Maday. He explained that he was asking the Vatican to remove Maday from the priesthood, ending the archdiocese’s responsibility for him. The request was granted, and Maday is no longer a priest.

Maday remains in custody in Wisconsin — he was convicted of taking boys to a Wisconsin retreat and molesting them there, giving the state jurisdiction over those cases. His prison sentence is coming to an end, but the state has petitioned the courts to declare him a sexual offender and remand him to custody for treatment indefinitely. A hearing in Maday’s case is scheduled for Dec. 19.

George said in his deposition, “I’d come to know of the case in more detail ... I consider him a danger to children and I made that case to the State and asked [them] to keep him in some sense in custody to protect children.”

But Coughlin said that while he was in the archdiocese, his job was to provide whatever care he could to Maday.

“The cardinal couldn’t be visiting him in prison, but still, this is one of the corporal works of mercy” — obligations for Catholic faithful — “visiting the sick and visiting the imprisoned. So I was the one that would be visiting him in prison,” Coughlin said.

And while other prisoners have spouses or children to advocate for their interests with prison officials, priests don’t have those support systems, so it falls to the church to be their advocate. And in this case, it fell to Coughlin.

Coughlin said Maday was originally held in solitary confinement, and while he came to understand that prison officials believed this was for Maday’s own safety, Coughlin thought it was excessive and petitioned to have the priest moved out of solitary. The Chicago Archdiocese also convinced Wisconsin officials to allow Maday’s mother’s coffin to be brought to his prison for a funeral service, a privilege not extended to other inmates.

In 2006, after another priest sex abuse case became public, George commissioned several independent reviews of the Chicago Archdiocese procedures for handling allegations against priests. The reviewers described major flaws in the system.

One study was particularly critical of the Stritch retreat, where accused priests were essentially living without monitors and had master keys to the building — including rooms where other retreat visitors slept. Coughlin said the system in place was much stricter when he ran the center before 1995, and the 2006 report gave no indication at what point the monitoring protocols at the center had lapsed.

The archdiocese now says it has beefed up its reporting requirements for accused priests living at the retreat, including installing security cameras and changing locks, and otherwise has significantly reformed its procedures for managing allegations of sex abuse.