‘You Can Rape but You Can Not Steal’

Rape and molest trusting young boys for half a century, but do not touch the Catholic Church’s money.

Catholic Church Shielded Priests Who Raped Boys, but It Helped Lock Up a Priest Who Swiped Bucks

The monsignor who gambled and traveled on the Archdiocese’s dime remained behind bars as a grand jury reported on the crimes of his peers who preyed on children.

Therein lies the lesson offered in Pennsylvania by Father Francis Rogers and Monsignor William Dombrow.

Rogers’ decades of depredations were detailed in a grand jury report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia made public in 2005, and which was finally followed this week by a similar grand jury report on six other dioceses in Pennsylvania.

“The Grand Jury will never be able to determine how many boys Father Francis P. Rogers raped and sexually abused in his more than 50 years as a priest,” noted the earlier report on sexual assault committed by an unholy host of priests. “Nor, probably, will we or anyone else be able to calculate the number of boys the Archdiocese could have saved from sexual abuse had it investigated potential victims rather than protecting itself from scandal and shielding this sexually abusive priest. We have learned of at least three victims who we believe would not have been abused had the Archdiocese taken decisive action when it learned of Fr. Rogers’ “familiarity” with boys. We find that the Archdiocese received a litany of verifiable reports beginning shortly after Fr. Rogers’ 1946 ordination and continuing for decades about his serious misconduct with, and abuse of, boys. ‘

The report went on,” One of his victims described waking up intoxicated in the priest’s bed, opening his eyes to see Fr. Rogers, three other priests, and a seminarian surrounding him. Two of the priests ejaculated on him while Fr. Rogers masturbated himself. Then Fr. Rogers sucked on the victim’s penis, pinched his nipples, kissed him, and rubbed his stubbly beard all over him. The former altar boy, whom Fr. Rogers began abusing when he was about 12 years old, remains haunted by memories of the abuse more than 35 years later. “

The report concluded, “Father Rogers’ file demonstrates that the Archdiocese responded to reports of his crimes with a shameful half-century of transfers, excuses, and finger-wagging threats that did nothing to deter the priest from indulging his self-acknowledged ‘weakness’ and that exposed every boy in his path to the very real and horrible possibility of sexual abuse.”

At no point did a church official notify law enforcement about crimes that should have put Rogers behind bars for years. He instead remained at liberty and spent this final days in the comfort of Villa Saint Joseph, a diocesan residence for priests who are sidelined or retired as sexual predators.

“Father Rogers was never punished or held to account for his unchecked sexual predations or the devastation they caused,” the 2005 grand jury report notes. “He was permitted to retire in 1995, his ‘good name’ intact. The message clearly communicated by the Archdiocese’s actions—to victims and abusers alike—was that it would protect the reputation of its priests at all costs.”

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