The Archdiocese of Mobile will publish a list of clergy and religious officials who were removed from ministry following accusations of abusing a minor, Archbishop Thomas Rodi announced in a statement issued Nov. 9. The list will cover accusations dating back to 1950 and will be released alongside similar lists from the three other Catholic dioceses covering Alabama and Mississippi.
The announcement comes amid renewed scrutiny of the Catholic Church nationally following a Pennsylvania grand jury report published in August that documented more than 1,000 child victims of roughly 300 priests accused of abuse over several decades. In the months since that report became public, dioceses in New Orleans, Missouri, Texas, New York and other states have either been ordered to release similar records or have done so voluntarily in response to public pressure.
Archbishop Rodi’s decision follows a broader pattern set after clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church was widely exposed in Boston in 2002. That scandal prompted the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to adopt the 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, a policy framework that calls for accused priests to be removed from ministry immediately pending an investigation and requires all abuse allegations involving clergy to be reported to civil authorities.
The timing of the Mobile archdiocese’s announcement comes as the Vatican has reportedly asked the bishops’ conference to delay a vote on additional measures meant to hold bishops accountable for failing to protect children from abuse. It remains unclear how that development will affect the release of Mobile’s list. In a column published earlier this year in The Catholic Week, the archdiocese’s newspaper, Rodi wrote that the bishops’ conference has no authority over individual bishops and that any action by the national body is binding on a diocese only if it is approved by the Pope.
This will not be the first time the Archdiocese of Mobile has disclosed information about abuse within its ranks. In 2004, two years after the Boston scandal broke, the archdiocese released a report acknowledging that 13 of its priests had been accused of sexually abusing minors since 1950, involving a total of 18 victims. That report also disclosed that the archdiocese had paid more than $700,000 in legal settlements, fees, victim assistance and other related costs.
Since that 2004 report, the archdiocese has maintained a formal child protection policy, which is published on its website, mobilearch.org. Under that policy, every volunteer and employee who has contact with minors undergoes a background check and receives training in child protection, with annual retraining required afterward. Children enrolled in the archdiocese’s Catholic schools, parish youth groups and religious education programs also receive annual training on how to recognize, avoid and report misconduct.
The archdiocese has employed a full-time director of Child Protection since 2003, a position responsible for receiving misconduct accusations, assisting alleged victims through the process of reporting and overseeing investigations into those claims. All allegations involving minors are reported to civil authorities, and cases are also reviewed by an independent board made up of people unaffiliated with the archdiocese who come from a range of professional backgrounds, according to Rodi.
An outside national firm conducts an annual audit to verify that the archdiocese is following through on the child protection commitments it has made, Rodi wrote, describing the review as a check on the policy’s effectiveness going forward.
In his statement, Rodi acknowledged that compiling the list would take time, given the volume of records involved. “It is a time-consuming effort to examine each clergy personnel file from the last almost seven decades,” he said. “This effort is underway and will be completed as quickly as possible.”
Rodi has led the Archdiocese of Mobile since 2008, when he was named archbishop after transferring from the Diocese of Biloxi. He succeeded Oscar Lipscomb, who had served as archbishop for 28 years before stepping down. Lipscomb remains in Mobile, where he holds the title of Archbishop Emeritus.