Six years ago, New Jersey’s highest-ranking Catholic Church leader promised “a new level of transparency” following one of the worst abuse scandals in the church’s history.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin had just published a list of clergy members who were credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors in the Archdiocese of Newark — the largest in the state, with more than 1 million Catholics. That list of clergy members was “not an endpoint in our process,” Tobin said, but “an expression of our commitment to protecting our children.”
Since then, however, the archdiocese under Tobin’s leadership has shielded the public from details of alleged abuse within its ranks and at Seton Hall related to one of his predecessors, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who had been accused of decades of sexual abuse and later stripped of his ministry.
Tobin himself is a powerful figure, not just in New Jersey but in the Roman Catholic Church worldwide: He is a member of the College of Cardinals that selects the pope, sits on the Vatican’s equivalent of the Supreme Court and advises the pope on nominations of bishops.
Yet just months after Tobin made that pledge of transparency, the archdiocese instructed a seminary leader named Joseph Reilly to not answer questions about a 2014 allegation of sexual harassment at Seton Hall University, according to documents first reported by POLITICO in December. Seton Hall, whose boards Tobin sits on as the leader of the archdiocese, then hired Reilly as its new president last year, despite an independent recommendation that the archbishop remove him from leadership for failing to properly report past abuse allegations.
And at a secret court hearing two years ago that wasn’t disclosed until this month, one of New Jersey’s five Catholic dioceses successfully got a judge to quash part of a state investigation into clergy abuse, effectively blocking findings from becoming public. That effort, led by the Camden diocese, could not have happened without the approval of Tobin, his critics contend.
“Instead of taking action to try and stop Camden, they instead sat idly by while Camden essentially shut down this whole investigation,” said Greg Gianforcaro, a lawyer to abuse victims who have sued the state’s dioceses.
Tobin’s office said that four of the five dioceses — Metuchen, Newark, Paterson and Trenton — “have fully cooperated” with the state and “have not filed or joined any motions before any court to delay or impede any investigation by the State of New Jersey.”
Now Tobin is once again promising transparency in the face of a public relations crisis. Last Monday, he announced he hired a law firm to conduct a “comprehensive third-party review” of the 2019 investigation that named Reilly and about a dozen priests whose identities have not been made public. Reilly was not accused of abuse but rather failing to properly report accusations.
Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and three state lawmakers have called for Seton Hall to release that report. Two of those lawmakers have said Reilly should resign, but Seton Hall, part of the Newark archdiocese, has ignored all of them and reaffirmed its support of Reilly.
Tobin’s announcement of the investigation, to be done by the law firm Ropes & Gray, comes a week after state Sens. Joseph Vitale and Andrew Zwicker wrote to him urging “immediate corrective action” and for Seton Hall to “stand unequivocally on the side of transparency, accountability, and justice.”
They are not satisfied with Tobin’s hiring of another law firm, and said it is “deeply troubling” that he put no timetable on the new investigation. They said fundamental questions remain, including why the university ignored recommendations from the last investigation and why, if that investigation was flawed, the university has not said that.
“With those questions in mind, we cannot ignore a troubling thought: that this new investigation is meant to delay taking meaningful action and to shield the release of the existing report under the protection of attorney-client privilege,” wrote Vitale and Zwicker, who lead the Senate’s health and higher education committees, respectively. They added that they are reviewing public funding to Seton Hall, which is a private university but does receive some state money for programs.
“Survivors and the Seton Hall community deserve answers and action now, not in an indefinite future determined behind closed doors. Accountability delayed is accountability denied,” they said. “Hiring a law firm does not absolve Seton Hall from their responsibility to act in the best interest of students and survivors. A report already exists, and anything less than its release and immediate decisive action would be yet another attempt to sweep a grave injustice under the rug.”
Tobin said in his announcement that there will be a “a transparent review of the facts,” but his words were met with incredulity beyond the Statehouse.
“This is an investigation of the investigation — or a cover up of the cover up,” said Mark Crawford, a victim of clergy abuse and member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.
Pope Francis tapped the Detroit native Tobin to lead the Archdiocese of Newark on Nov. 7, 2016 — one day before America elected Donald Trump president for the first time. Tobin came into a reclamation project: McCarrick had been accused of decades of sexual abuse and later became the first cardinal in church history to be defrocked for sex crimes. Another archbishop, John J. Myers, came under scrutiny for how he handled abuse allegations and for lavish spending at his home.
Tobin’s installation Mass in 2017 attracted then-Gov. Chris Christie — a graduate of Seton Hall’s law school — and former Sen. Bob Menendez, and Tobin said then he recognized the “daunting proposition” and high stakes ahead. In the years since, Tobin has attended an annual train ride to Washington that draws hundreds of New Jersey’s political players, and his Masses have brought in figures like Murphy and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who is running for governor.
When McCarrick’s years of alleged abuse broke into public view in 2018, Seton Hall — with Tobin sitting atop its boards — hired a pair of law firms to investigate. That review found decades of sexual harassment and a “culture of fear and intimidation” under McCarrick, according to a summary published by the university.
A separate memo viewed by POLITICO with key findings of that investigation was delivered to the Board of Regents, the university’s governing body. It detailed how Reilly, then rector and dean of the school’s Immaculate Conception Seminary, investigated “in house” a student complaint of sexual assault and did not report it or follow the school and federal Title IX policies and procedures. It also said Reilly dismissed a seminarian in 2012 who was an alleged victim of sexual abuse without investigating the incident or escalating the matter, a violation of university policy.
Reilly, who once served as priest secretary to McCarrick, also told investigators that he received information about a 2014 allegation of sexual harassment at St. Andrew’s Hall, a seminary at Seton Hall, but did not report it. The archdiocese instructed Reilly not to discuss that allegation, but it’s unclear why. Tobin’s office said that “this and other questions will be examined” during the new investigation.
Investigators recommended in 2019, pursuant to a responsive action plan the school’s governing body adopted, that Reilly be removed as a seminary leader and member of university boards. He acknowledged the findings and stepped down from a hiring committee but remained in leadership.
Reilly took a sabbatical in 2022 but returned as a vice provost and, last year, became university president “with the endorsement of the University’s leadership and the Archdiocese of Newark,” the school said.
Reilly’s promotion infuriated John Bellocchio, who claimed in a lawsuit he was abused by McCarrick as a teenager.
“I am just completely sick of the bullshit of the archdiocese of Newark,” Bellocchio said in an interview before Tobin’s announcement. “The record speaks for itself that Joe Reilly shouldn’t have this job and Joe Reilly shouldn’t keep this job.”
Around the same time of the McCarrick-related investigation, New Jersey’s attorney general set up a task force to look into clergy abuse statewide. But documents reported last week by NorthJersey.com and obtained by POLITICO show that the five dioceses, led by Camden, appeared before a Superior Court judge in May 2023. Camden challenged whether the state has the authority to present its findings to a grand jury to consider charges.
The judge, Peter Warshaw, ruled in favor of the Camden diocese, and the matter is now before the state Supreme Court. The attorney general’s office said it is still dedicated to the mission of the Clergy Abuse Task Force and will “continue to work to bring justice to the victims and survivors of unimaginable abuses, and hold accountable not only their abusers, but also persons and entities facilitating that abuse.”
Tobin’s office said that all dioceses “have fully cooperated” with the state and “have not filed or joined any motions before any court to delay or impede any investigation by the State of New Jersey.”
Crawford, of the SNAP advocacy group, said Tobin could have intervened to allow the state to carry out its job and bring some accountability to victims.
“If he really wanted to, he could have directed Camden to stand down and let this unfold so victims can heal and there’s closure,” Crawford said. “That’s been a long tactic of the church — delay, delay, delay. It’s worked for them.”
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