[LifeSite News] The Jesuit order for decades used Gonzaga University’s campus to house priests who had been removed from active service in the priesthood due to accusations of sexual abuse, according to an report recently published by the Center for Investigative Reporting and republished by the Associated Press.
According to the report, the Jesuit order’s Oregon Province sent to the university at least 20 Jesuit priests who had been accused of sexual misconduct, in most cases while they were functioning in the order’s missions in isolated Alaska villages populated by indigenous people as well as Indian reservations in the northwestern U.S.
The priests were kept on the campus in a building that is called the “Cardinal Bea House,” which is situated on the Gonzaga campus but belongs to the Jesuit order itself, rather than to the university.
According to the report, one of the most infamous abusers who eventually came to live on campus had a powerful supporter – a current vice president of Gonzaga, Father Frank Case, who at the time was the head of the Jesuits’ Oregon Province. In 1989, Case wrote a glowing letter of recommendation for the abuser priest’s appointment to a hospital chaplaincy position, claiming that the priest was in “very good standing” with the order, despite the fact that the priest had already been removed from his assignment in Alaska because of complaints of sexual abuse.
Gonzaga is located in Spokane, Washington, and was founded in 1887 by the Jesuit order. The school is so liberal that it recently blocked a proposed speaking engagement for the conservative and pro-life Jewish commentator Ben Shapiro, claiming it was concerned for the safety of “vulnerable members of our community who may be targeted for discrimination, ridicule, or harassment by others” as a result of the appearance.
The Jesuit order, whose full name is the “Society of Jesus,” was once famous for its defense of Catholic orthodoxy, and its priests were highly valued as missionaries and educators. However, in the last 60 years the order has embraced a far-left political and social ideology opposed to Catholic teaching. It is now famous for priests who openly attack Catholic sexual morality and promote a redefinition of the Catholic faith along ideological lines. Its membership is in steep decline; in Europe and the USA it has only half the membership it did in 1988.Advertisement
The order’s abandonment of Catholic doctrine in general and on sexual morality in particular is so pronounced and public that in 2008 Pope Benedict XVI publicly called upon the order’s members to reaffirm their “total adhesion to Catholic doctrine,” and specifically mentioned the Church’s teachings on “sexual morality.”
[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman and originally published at LifeSite News]
