DOJ probe of Catholic church abuse goes quiet 2 years later

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Two years ago, the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia joined the long line of ambitious prosecutors investigating the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of priest-abuse complaints.

The Justice Department had never brought a conspiracy case against the church, despite exhaustive reports that showed its long history of burying abuse complaints in secret archives, transferring problem priests to new parishes, silencing accusers and fighting laws to benefit child sex assault victims.

U.S. Attorney William McSwain sent subpoenas to bishops across Pennsylvania asking them to turn over their files and submit to grand jury testimony if asked. The FBI interviewed at least six accused priests, court files show.

But as McSwain’s tenure likely nears its end with President-elect Joe Biden set to take office next month, there’s no sign that any sweeping church indictment is afoot. So far, the case has yielded a single arrest: an 82-year-old defrocked priest, Robert Brennan, charged with lying to FBI agents who showed up at his door.

The filings in that case, though, are revealing. They show the FBI had reached a dead end in the broader church probe five months after McSwain set his sights on it.

“I can say with confidence that this team has been extraordinarily thorough and that this investigation is now on the wind-down,” an FBI agent wrote in a March 22, 2019, memo to McSwain’s office.

Victim advocates who have long sought a full reckoning over the alleged cover-up by church officials are disappointed, but perhaps not surprised.

McSwain is far from the first prosecutor to wonder if the Catholic Church’s handling of sex assault complaints, especially before it adopted its "Dallas Charter” for the protection of children in 2002, was the work of a...