Daly and Schaeffer did not return calls for this story. The Chicago Province responded to questions about McGuire with a statement from current Provincial Timothy Kesicki.
"We are painfully aware that in the past we did not do enough to prevent abuse of children and vulnerable adults, and that we made mistakes by thinking that restrictive measures we undertook with regard to Donald McGuire would be effective," Kesicki said in the statement. "More important, we failed to listen to those who came forward and to meet their courage in dealing with Donald McGuire as we should have." Province spokesman Jeremy Langford said Jesuit officials could not address specific questions about McGuire because of the ongoing litigation.
Courtesy of alleged victim “Mark”
Jesuit priest and former USF professor Donald McGuire with one of his alleged victims in Walnut Creek in 1982.
Kimberly Sandie
San Francisco priest Joseph Fessio learned McGuire had allegedly molested a Bay Area teenager in 1993, and passed on the information to Jesuit superiors — but not the police.
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In the summer of 1993, as Charles's family was prodding the Jesuits to perform a full investigation of their complaint, McGuire arrived at Saint John Vianney Center, a psychiatric treatment facility for clergy situated on a green-lawned campus outside Philadelphia. He was promptly diagnosed by his care providers with "frotteurism," a sexual fetish with touching or rubbing one's hands and genitals against a nonconsenting partner, a condition doctors often ascribe to child molesters.
In another of Daly's detailed memos, this one recording the reports of McGuire's psychiatrist, the socius noted, "Don is beginning to disclose more and acknowledge showering together, looking at porno together." McGuire also admitted to his therapist, Dennis O'Hara, that "he has been close to 12-14 youngsters over the years." O'Hara, who no longer works at the center, said in a telephone interview that he did not remember McGuire, and would be unable to discuss his case even if he did, because of patient confidentiality.
Daly recorded this progress in September 1993. But McGuire's therapeutic program was about to take a turn. In November, McGuire was visited at Saint John Vianney by John Hardon, a laconic Jesuit whose rigid orthodoxy earned him the nickname "Father Hard On" among more easygoing priests, according to a former colleague. Like McGuire, he worked with Mother Teresa, the famous nun who established humanitarian convents throughout the world.
O'Hara saw Hardon's presence as an obstacle to McGuire's treatment. "Despite what John [Hardon] said about psychotherapy, he does not believe in it ... and does not see Don in need of this kind of treatment," O'Hara reported. "He sees Don more as a victim, which ... fed Don's denial." He described Hardon as an "advocate" for his troubled fellow priest. An internal summary of McGuire's history later created by the Jesuits describes a November 1993 letter Hardon wrote to the Chicago Province in which he "downplayed Don's very real sexual problems."
Hardon rose to prominence within the church before his death in 2000. He was close to Pope Paul VI, and consulted on the writing of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a summation of doctrine edited by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. In 2005, a formal inquiry was initiated into whether Hardon should be made a saint.
Robert McDermott, a priest from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, is the "postulator," or chief researcher and advocate, for the cause of Hardon's canonization. He was not aware of the role Hardon played in the McGuire affair before SF Weekly provided him with documents detailing the late priest's involvement. McDermott said it is the closest Hardon has come to being implicated in a pedophilia scandal, though the record does not conclusively show how his actions influenced the Jesuits' handling of McGuire.
"They were both working for Mother Teresa. That might have been a common bond. But I don't know why he didn't take a harder line on this," McDermott says. "I'm a little puzzled at this, but beyond that, I don't know what to say."
McGuire left Saint John Vianney two months after Hardon's visit. In a January 1994 memo, Provincial Schaeffer wrote a resigned memo describing his "extremely difficult" debriefing with the returning priest. McGuire ranted about the constraints imposed on him at the hospital and assailed his superiors for not being more supportive in the face of Charles's allegations. "It is clear that the basics are not going to change here," Schaeffer wrote. "Don McGuire is going to try to continue to lead his life as independently as possible."
In hindsight, the prescience of McGuire's Jesuit superiors over the years would be darkly comic, had it not been linked to the physical and emotional havoc the priest wrought. Because McGuire, true to their predictions, did not change. Over the decade between his release from Saint John Vianney and the beginning of the first police investigation into his conduct in 2003, eight new allegations against him were lodged with the Chicago Province. The society's responses were consistently lackluster. In 1995, the Jesuits issued guidelines barring McGuire from traveling or spending the night with anyone under the age of 21. In 2001, the permissible minimum age was raised to 30.
In the later stages of McGuire's career, it appears that the priests who had known him for decades were once again alerted to his unsettling behavior. Fessio was copied on a 1995 letter from a Southern California woman warning McGuire not to "attempt to harass or contact my son." In 2000, according to Jesuit records, Fessio reported to California Provincial Thomas Smolich that he had heard McGuire was in Massachusetts claiming to act as "legal guardian" for a 14-year-old boy, whom he intended to bring to live with him.
