Seton Hall president ‘not implicated’ in internal sex allegation report, Newark Archdiocese says

Seton Hall University President Monsignor Joseph Reilly was “not implicated” in an internal report examining the school’s response to sex abuse allegations, the Archdiocese of Newark said this week.

The archdiocese on July 1 announced the release of its own report into whether an internal investigation commissioned by Seton Hall — the latter known as the “Latham report” — revealed that Reilly knew about abuse allegations at the university and yet failed to report them. Reilly was appointed president of the school in 2024.

Archbishop Cardinal Joseph Tobin said in the July 1 announcement that the archdiocese’s report, which was launched in February 2025 and performed by the law firm Ropes & Gray LLP, revealed that Reilly “was not implicated in the Latham report.”

The archdiocesan report reveals that Reilly “responded promptly to allegations of sexual harassment involving seminarians at [Seton Hall’s] Immaculate Conception Seminary in 2012,” though Reilly “did not follow the university’s Title IX reporting requirements” because he had not been trained on them, Tobin said.

The Latham report, which has never been made public, was expected to examine whether Reilly, then-rector of Seton Hall’s Immaculate Conception Seminary, knew about sexual misconduct allegations against now-deceased former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and failed to report them.

The Ropes & Gray inquiry, however, states that the Latham report “contains no findings or allegations that Monsignor Reilly … witnessed or received reports of any sexual misconduct by McCarrick (or any other individuals) at any time,” including during a stint as McCarrick’s secretary in the early 1990s.

Among its findings, the Ropes & Gray report said Reilly in 2012 removed a seminarian from the school’s seminary after the younger man was found to have engaged in sexual harassment.

Reilly was “not involved” in a separate 2014 dispute over inappropriate conduct involving two adults, meanwhile.

In his announcement on July 1, Tobin said that “nothing in [the] thorough report changes my firm view that Monsignor Reilly is a good priest with formidable experience and a deep commitment to a Catholic institution serving the Church and the world.”

“He is highly regarded across the Seton Hall community and has my full respect and confidence,” the archbishop said.

The Latham report was commissioned by Seton Hall in 2019 and produced by the law firm Latham & Watkins; the school ordered it after bombshell allegations involving McCarrick, who died in 2025.

A New Jersey appeals court ruled in June that Seton Hall would not have to fully disclose the report as part of ongoing clergy abuse lawsuits.

The appeals court did rule that one section of the report regarding the university’s sexual harassment policies could be disclosed in court, though parts of that section could be subject to redactions depending on the contents.