Editorial: Newark archbishop John Meyers' unconvincing dodge

Star-Ledger Editorial Board
May 26, 2013

Newark Archbishop John J. Myers has broken his long silence with a remarkable statement in yesterday’s Star-Ledger that attempts to evade any personal responsibility for allowing a known sex offender under his supervision to mingle with children.

He offers no apology to the families whose children were put in harm’s way. He offers no explanation for the breathtaking lapses in this case. And he makes no significant policy changes.

In the place of moral leadership, Myers offers a carefully parsed and legalistic dodge, while demoting one of his senior aides in a transparent attempt to mollify critics who have called for his own resignation.

Myers, it seems, still doesn’t get it. While many bishops are making sincere efforts to root out abusive priests and to make amends for past efforts to cover up the problem, he remains stuck in the past. He has long been too tolerant of priests facing credible accusations, and too secretive about his responses.

Myers, for example, will not release the names of people he appointed to an internal review panel — again, as many others do. In this case, the review panel found that no abuse occurred, an impossible conclusion when you consider the detailed confession of the accused priest, the Rev. Michael Fugee, who told police he groped a boy’s genitals and derived sexual pleasure from the act. The panel, as The Star-Ledger’s Mark Mueller reported, made virtually no effort to find the victim or his parents and did not hear their testimony.

The archdiocese agreed to keep Fugee away from children in a binding agreement with Bergen County prosecutors. It then failed to enforce the agreement, and soon Fugee was attending retreats with teens and hearing their confession, in direct violation of the agreement.

That fits a pattern. Before this latest flare-up, Myers had promoted Fugee as co-director of the office that helps guide young priests, sending precisely the wrong message. Earlier this year, Fugee was found to be celebrating Mass and living at the rectory of a church in Rochelle Park. Parishioners had not been told of his criminal past, so again, children were exposed. In 2009, Myers appointed Fugee chaplain of St. Michael’s Medical Center in Newark, again without telling the hospital about Fugee’s restrictions.

Myers has shown leniency toward other troubled priests, as well. In 2004, he wrote a letter of recommendation to six dioceses in Florida for one priest, a week after learning the priest had been accused of breaking into a woman’s house and assaulting her. The same year, he banned one priest from public ministry after investigating an allegation that he had abused a boy, but did not notify lay people or other priests. In 2007, he did not tell lay people about a credible finding of molestation against a priest working in Elizabeth and Jersey City.

It is obvious that a vigorous housecleaning is needed in the archdiocese. And it is equally obvious that Myers is not the man to lead it