The Philadelphia Grand Jury Report

Mike Perry was kind enough to post the NCR article on the Philadelphia Grand Jury report on sexual abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The report was more then 3 years in the making; the time lag left some of us in the Archdiocese hopeful that the Grand Jury was having trouble finding problems. To our sorrow, the result was the exact opposite, and the Report is devasting, both as to the high incidence of abuse and the tragic manner in which it was handled. While not exactlty nuanced or discriminating among different cases, the Report was profoundly disillusioning, as was the Archdioces's public reponses. Here at Villanova Law we will be holding a panel of reponses at a date to be announced, sometime in the next few weeks. The panelists will include Jim Post, a Villanova Law grad and one of the founders and the first national president of Voice of the Faithful, Chuck Zeck, who is a prof at our business school and the director of our new institute on church management, and yours truly. We will all be talking about the problem of accountability from our different perspectives; I'll also be talking about some of the legal issues. I'll post the date and other info when it I get it all worked out. All are welcome.

-Mark