Banned priest not monitored

Brothers Michael Bellamy, at rear, and Jayson Bellamy
allegedly were sexually abused by the Rev. Carroll Howlin. (Handout photo)

"Since he's no longer a (functioning) priest of ours, how can any entity be expected to have the resources to know what someone else is doing at any given moment of the day?" Dwyer said. "We are no longer responsible for his actions, but we do our best to inform everyone when we hear something and have for the last decade.

"It's not in our diocese," said Dwyer, who added that diocesan officials had no knowledge of the circumstances of Howlin's current life until the Tribune raised questions. "We have no control over that aspect of what he's doing."

But Howlin is in fact still a Joliet Diocese priest who is supposed to answer to its bishop, according to both the Vatican and other experts. The diocese continues Howlin's pension, and Conlon has the authority to dictate where Howlin lives. Many dioceses give housing assignments to priests removed from ministry so that they can supervise them more effectively.

"Without any supervision, how can you be sure that he is meeting his lifetime sentence of penance and prayer?" asked Nicholas Cafardi, former dean of the Duquesne University Law School in Pittsburgh and one of the foremost lay canon lawyers in the United States. "Something doesn't quite click here."

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In the nine years since the diocese review board deemed two allegations against Howlin credible, records show church officials have done little to keep tabs on him. His file includes only a few letters reminding him not to minister to the public and one forcing him to stop writing his "Cleric's Column" for the weekly newspaper.

Dwyer said there has been no reason to otherwise monitor his activity in Kentucky or demand his return to Joliet, even after the 2010 Vatican ruling prohibiting him from being alone with minors.

"From everything we've heard, he's so infirm right now," Dwyer said. "He doesn't get around much. So it almost seems like overkill."

The diocese fought for years to keep Howlin's records private, but it recently relinquished his personnel file and those of 14 other priests with substantiated claims against them as part of a legal settlement in an unrelated case.

Prior allegations

Howlin became a diocesan priest in 1961 and spent his early career as an instructor at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary near Romeoville. In 1977 he was granted a three-year leave of absence to do missionary work in McCreary County, Ky., a hardscrabble area struggling with high unemployment, a rampant drug trade and a lack of social services.

As three years here turned into three decades, Howlin's reputation grew among the mostly Baptist locals. He led clothing drives, ran food pantries, helped build houses and brought running water to backwoods homes.

"We owe a lot to the Catholics around here," says Dora West, who lives in nearby Pine Knot. "Father Howlin put a lot of roofs over people's heads. That's why no one is going to believe anything bad about him."

Howlin was briefly suspended in 1995 after a former seminarian accused the priest of sexually molesting him during a camping trip. Records show the diocese review board found in the priest's favor. Church officials returned him to ministry after a Catholic psychiatric facility declared that Howlin did not pose a threat to children.

Seven years later, a California man sued Howlin, accusing him of repeated abuse when he was a 16-year-old seminarian at St. Charles Borromeo. The suit alleged that the abuse took place multiple times at the seminary and during a mission trip to Kentucky. A Will County judge dismissed the case, ruling that the statute of limitations had passed.

The Vatican ruled that it could not consider the claim because at the time of the allegation, church doctrine held that the boy was not a minor. Still, the diocese purchased an annuity worth $78,000 for the victim in 2010.

Church officials suspended the priest in 2002 pending investigation, and he was never reinstated. They attempted to distance themselves from Howlin by telling reporters that the diocese had very little contact with him since granting him leave in 1977. The contents of his 1,500-page personnel file, however, appear to contradict that claim. The file includes news clippings and voluminous correspondence about his missionary work over the years.

While the diocese's internal investigation of the California man's allegation was still pending, then-Joliet Bishop Joseph Imesch wrote to one of the priest's friends complaining that he was forced to remove Howlin from ministry. On the day the letter was dated, June 12, 2002, Imesch was in Dallas with other bishops to adopt new guidelines to protect children from abusive priests.

"I am upset that Father Howlin has been released from ministry," Imesch wrote to the supporter. "... people like Father Howlin are removed from ministry for a period of time far beyond what I think is called for."

Local authorities in Kentucky responded with a different tone.

Commonwealth's Attorney Allen Trimble, whose district includes Whitley City, said in an interview that he was deeply disturbed by the allegation from the California man when he talked to him by phone in 2002. Diocese records show Trimble told a church official that "he would bet the farm" the allegation was true.