A defrocked priest from the suburbs says the future Pope Leo XIV signed off on his move in 2000 to a Hyde Park monastery near a Catholic school after the priest had been accused of molesting children.
Robert Prevost, now newly installed as Pope Leo XIV, was the head of the Midwest province of the Catholic church’s Augustinian religious order at the time.
“He’s the one who gave me permission to stay there,” James M. Ray, the former priest, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Ray was accused of being a pedophile priest, restricted from public ministry and needed someplace to live where the church deemed he wouldn’t pose a danger to the public.
Speaking with a reporter outside the suburban apartment complex where he now lives, Ray added context to a recent statement from a lawyer for the religious order about Ray’s move to the monastery on 54th Place operated the Augustinians.
In that written statement, Michael Airdo, a longtime lawyer for the Augustinians in Chicago, said Cardinal Francis George, who died in 2015, was behind Ray’s move there after the priest was implicated in child sex abuse accusations.
“The placement of a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago at St. John Stone Friary from 2000 to 2002 was an accommodation to the late Cardinal Francis George . . . as head of the Archdiocese of Chicago,” according to Airdo’s statement.
But Ray dismisses any notion that the Augustinians took him in under pressure from George as head of the archdiocese, the arm of the church for Cook and Lake counties.
As Chicago’s archbishop, George ultimately was responsible for church leaders and organizations operating in his geographic domain, even though Catholic religious orders like the Augustinians have their own leadership and operate semi-autonomously.
According to Ray, he initially was moved to another residence following the accusations.
“Where I was staying was going to be torn down,” said Ray, who an Illinois attorney general report in 2023 said molested at least 13 children, though he has not been convicted of any crime and is not on any government sex offender registry.
As a result, he said, the archdiocese’s vicar for priests, who reported to George, “put out the word” to church organizations that might have available housing to find a place for him to stay.
“They’re the only one that responded,” Ray said of the Augustinians, saying the order wasn’t pressured to take him in.
The St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School, less than a block from the St. John Stone Friary where Ray lived from 2000 to 2002, was apparently never notified of Ray’s presence.
What’s more, as archdiocesan officials considered having Ray move there, they incorrectly asserted “there was no school in the immediate area,” church records show.
A child care center also was — and remains — across the alley from the monastery. There’s no indication it was notified either about Ray’s proximity, which was detailed in a 2021 Sun-Times story that’s helping fuel new questions about Prevost.
Ray is aware he’s becoming newsworthy given all this, saying a relative overseas recently heard his name in the news surrounding the new pope.
“I’m not the only one,” Ray said of priests who’ve been causing controversy for the new pope.
Asked whether he’s referring to the Rev. Richard McGrath, Ray wasn’t clear. McGrath is a now-former Augustinian who also was sidelined at the monastery, though nearly 20 years later while Prevost was out of the picture.
Ray added about Prevost: “I never met the man.”
But he confirmed it was the future pope who gave the approval for him to move into the friary.
Asked how he knows, Ray said, “That’s what the paperwork said, and I think Jim said” so as well.
“Jim” refers to the Rev. James Thompson, a now-deceased Augustinian who lived at the monastery and served as Ray’s on-site monitor while Ray lived there.
Airdo’s statement sought to distance Prevost from the responsibility of handling Ray, saying: “When Archdiocesan Priest James M. Ray moved into the Friary, he was subject to restrictions stemming from his previous allegations of abuse.”
“While Ray resided at St. John Stone, he came under the auspices of the Prior” — Thompson — “assigned to the Friary. He was responsible for ensuring that Ray complied with his restrictions.”
“The role of then-Provincial Prevost was to accept a guest of the house at the remuneration rates noted,” according to the statement. “The Prior of the Friar had exclusive control over the acceptance of any new residents.”
Asked of his impressions of Prevost as pope, Ray joked that when he heard that he’d been chosen, he thought, “Why did it have to be an Augustinian?”
But overall, Ray said, Prevost’s selection carries “very positive vibes.”
Prevost hasn’t returned numerous emails about Ray dating back several years. In a 2023 interview with Vatican Media, he said of the abuse crisis: “Silence is not the solution. We must be transparent and honest, we must accompany and assist the victims, because otherwise their wounds will never heal. There is a great responsibility in this, for all of us.”
Many sex offenders and accused child molesters try to minimize their own behavior, and Ray seems to fall into that category.
Asked about allegations that he molested children, Ray said: “It was a young man that I gave back rubs to.”
Reminded that the abuse accusations were numerous and serious, Ray’s subsequent explanation was difficult to follow and ended with him simply saying, “I don’t know.”
Ray was laicized by the church in 2012.
“I felt abandoned by the church, but never felt abandoned by God,” he said. “My faith is still strong. I live out my life each day the best I can. When this comes up, there’s a pain in my chest.”
He said he was “shocked” that there were 13 accusations against him.
“I can’t change the past. I don’t necessarily want to defend myself either. But on a scale of one to 10, I was wrong, but it was a one or maybe a half even. It wasn’t a child. Was a young adult, over 20. I was wrong, and I got to live with that.”
Church records show there were numerous children abused by him.
Ray, now in his mid-70s, was ordained in 1975 under Chicago’s then-Cardinal John Cody. During Ray’s ministerial career, he was assigned to St. Anastasia Parish in Waukegan, Transfiguration Parish in Wauconda and St. Peter Damian Parish in Bartlett — with the latter congregation hosting at least three accused predator priests over the years and named for an 11th century saint who once railed against sexual misconduct by clergy.
The archdiocesan list of accused offenders says Ray was subject to “limited ministry with restrictions” starting in 1990, following sex abuse accusations. He was only removed from “public ministry” in 2002 after an explosive Boston Globe series on the sex abuse crisis prompted a series of reforms by the church — including a prohibition against clergy with even one credible abuse allegation ever again serving in public ministry.
Until then, Ray and countless other clergy were recirculated in various ways as the church tried to keep them under wraps — sometimes cynically to avoid scandal, sometimes because they were wrongly told by mental health professionals that treatment could cure bad impulses or behavior.
Accordingly, Ray ended up assigned for a time to Catholic Charities, the social service arm of the archdiocese that he says was responsible for housing him.
Amid an onslaught of litigation, in 2014 George publicly released the internal files of numerous accused priests in the Chicago region, with Ray’s among them, showing in sometimes graphic detail what he allegedly did to children.
“In a file review three males who reported being sexually abused by Father Jim Ray,” said one record in the 680 pages of documents released on him. “Following is their names and their age at the time of the abuse: [REDACTED] age 10-16, [REDACTED] 11-12, and [REDACTED] 12-18.”
“Additionally as indicated below there appears to have been an additional three named males that Jim Ray may have masturbated.”
“The common theme within these three formal allegations of sexual abuse was that Jim Ray became close to their families . . . Then Jim Ray physically touched them inappropriately by having them sit on his lap which over time lead to him giving them back rubs that eventually went lower.”
“Each of the victims reported that while sitting on his lap or during the back rubs they ‘felt his (Jim Ray’s) erect penis.’ The back rubs became mutual and also lead to mutual masturbation.”
Church records show Ray also admitted to church officials to another incident during a 1993 visit to Medjugorje, a town in the Balkan region of Europe where the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared and that’s become a pilgrimage site for Catholics and other Christians. At an airport during the trip, “he met a paraplegic who asked him (Jim Ray) to masturbate him which he (Jim Ray) admittedly did.”
Ray is one of 451 accused child-molesting clerics named in the Illinois attorney general report, and he’s one of 166 credibly accused clergy members on a publicly available online list maintained by the archdiocese.
Five men live in walking distance to him who are registered sex offenders, records show.
A Sun-Times reporter was outside Ray’s sprawling apartment complex a recent weekday and, not long after 3:30 p.m., school buses began winding through the streets dropping off neighbor kids steps from his door. A pushcart vendor selling popsicles passed by. A child on the second-floor balcony next to Ray’s unit played with toys.
Ray told a Sun-Times reporter he mostly keeps to himself.
