Friday, September 11, 2026

With sex abuse allegations, some priests wonder: Will I be presumed innocent until proven guilty?

But some experts are hesitant to consider policy changes based on scattered reports of erroneous allegations.

by Kevin Clarke September 10, 2026

Father Michael Pfleger, senior pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago, is pictured in a file photo. In an Aug. 24, 2026, letter to St. Sabina parishioners, Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich said that a recently made allegation against Father Pfleger had been "thoroughly reviewed" and found unsubstantiated. (OSV News photo/Jim Young, Reuters)

More than 20 years after the abuse crisis first roiled the U.S. Catholic Church, the response this summer from one accused priest was dramatic and unprecedented. Father Michael Pfleger, the at-times controversial leader of a South Side Chicago parish, fiercely objected to an archdiocesan letter that disclosed an allegation of a decades-old incident of sexual assault on a child.

The south tower of the World Trade Center bursts into flames after being struck by United Airlines Flight 175 in New York on September 11, 2001 (OSV News photo/Sean Adair, Reuters).

At 8:45 on the morning of September 11, 2001, I was alone in my office on the thirty-first floor of the midtown Manhattan building I commuted to every day from Brooklyn. I was starting up my computer when something cast a brief fluttering shadow over the desk and carpeting. My first thought was birds, though that seemed strange; I had never seen birds up here before, this high. The building itself was set at an angle to the cross-streets, East Thirty-Third and Park Avenue South, so that from my window there was a clear, unobstructed view southeast along the East River to the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, and downtown to the towers of the World Trade Center. They dominated the sky, and by habit that’s where my eyes went, looking for a glimpse of whatever had passed in front of the bright late-summer sun. Inexplicably, there was a wedge-shaped gash in the north tower. I searched the still-quiet floor looking for someone who might be able to confirm what I was seeing. The woman I brought back to my window acknowledged what by then was a gaping hole ringed in wispy orange flame.

Catholic Church provides needed moral compass in AI discussions, panelists say

September 10, 2026

Thursday, September 10, 2026