Chicago settles nine abuse suits: the price of a scandal

The Archdiocese of Chicago will pay roughly 5.5 million dollars to nine people who say they were abused by priests, under a settlement made public on 10 September 2026 by the plaintiffs' attorneys. The alleged acts span the 1970s to the 1990s. Four of the priests named were not on the archdiocese's list of clergy "credibly accused."

The figure itself is not agreed upon: the attorneys announce 5.5 million dollars, while another count sets it at 5.4 million. The archdiocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the settlement. One of its officials stated: "We have paid more than 400 million dollars to victims, and we continue to ask them to come forward; they will be received with dignity and compassion." Several of the cases settled in recent years concern the former priest Daniel McCormack, who admitted abusing many children and spent more than ten years in prison.

One of the plaintiffs' attorneys spoke of "a tipping point and a turning point," invoking "the courage of every survivor" that had made possible a change in the archdiocese and beyond.

The millstone about the neck

Our Lord did not measure His words on this point. "But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of scandals" (Saint Matthew, XVIII, 6-7). Scandal is not a regrettable weakness: it is the murder of another's soul, and it is the graver as the victim is small and the guilty man was set to guard her.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches, in explaining the fifth commandment, that God requires an account of the blood of the innocent and that this precept is given to protect the life of each one. What the law forbids against the body, charity demands still more for the soul. The priest receives his anointing not to use the sheep but to lead them to Christ; he who turns that charge against the child entrusted to him profanes at once both innocence and the priesthood.

The measure

A settlement discharges a temporal debt; it does not touch the debt contracted before God. Five and a half million dollars repair, as far as a figure can, a material wrong; they do not give back the innocence that was seized, and they pronounce nothing on the account that the millstone and the sea stand for. The sum tells the extent of the evil; it does not efface it.

One fact weighs heavier than the amount: four of the priests named were not carried on the list of the "credibly accused." To hide the wolf is to leave him in the midst of the flock; silence about the guilty man is a second scandal on top of the first, and it falls under the same word of Christ. Tradition does not ask only that one pay: it asks that the truth be told, that the names be rendered, that the little ones be protected first.

What the faithful must retain is sober. The crime of a cleric undoes neither the faith nor the priesthood itself, which remains holy when the man damns himself. But it obliges us to hold together two things the world separates: mercy for the victims and justice without complaisance for the acts. We pray for the one, we cover nothing of the other, and we keep before our eyes the millstone the Lord named before us.

Sources. Gospel according to Saint Matthew, XVIII, 6-7 (Douay-Rheims); Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth commandment.