Is the Rev. Freddy Washington a child molester or not?
The Catholic priest is part of a religious order known as the Spiritans, and once ministered on the South Side and attended the same Catholic graduate school in Hyde Park as Pope Leo XIV. Washington has been on the Archdiocese of Chicago’s online list of clergy deemed to have been credibly accused of child sex abuse since 2022.
In 2023, Washington was named in an Illinois attorney general report as one of 451 clerics who served at some point in one of Illinois’ six Catholic dioceses and have credible sex abuse claims — with all of those names “substantiated by an Illinois diocese, a non-Illinois diocese, a Catholic religious order and/or a criminal conviction or guilty plea.”
But the U.S. leader of his religious order, whose province is based in the Pittsburgh area, said in a series of recent email exchanges with the Chicago Sun-Times that the “Spiritan Congregation does not regard Fr. Freddy Washington as credibly accused.”
To the contrary, says the Rev. John Fogarty, “our Congregation conducted an outside independent investigation into the allegations, which concluded that they were unsubstantiated.”
“Therefore, any website that states otherwise is incorrect, in our opinion.”
To which Cardinal Blase Cupich, head of Chicago’s archdiocese, is mum, refusing to explain why and how Washington landed on his list — whether it was in error, whether he’s aware of more accusations against Washington or if he judges what’s credible differently.
A disclaimer on Cupich’s list says the “archdiocese has not independently investigated these allegations” against members of religious orders and “is publishing this list for the benefit of archdiocese parishioners, based solely on the official determinations provided by the religious orders, which have jurisdiction over their members.”
Beyond the confused messaging over Washington’s status, his case illustrates the haphazard way the Catholic Church continues to vet — and publicly reveal — child sex abuse claims amid a crisis that has persisted for decades in the U.S. and beyond, involving thousands of clergy and countless young victims.
How the new pope plans to handle all this remains uncertain, but church reformers are already pushing him to deal with sex crimes by clergy more aggressively, and openly.
Pope Francis and his predecessors allowed geographic jurisdictions of the church — called dioceses or, if they’re large, archdioceses — to decide if and how to publicize their accused through what are essentially localized sex offender registries.
Within the church, profoundly uneven transparency
As the Sun-Times has chronicled for several years, the resulting transparency has been grossly uneven in the U.S. and created an incomplete accounting of the scandal — robbing the public of a full understanding of the scope of the crimes, some victims of an opportunity to heal, and the institutional church of a chance to fully atone for sexual misdeeds and cover-ups.
Some lists from those American ecclesiastical jurisdictions include only “diocesan” priests, or those directly reporting to their local bishops. Some also include religious orders. Some only include names, some also include assignment histories, even photos. Some include just clergy, some include lay offenders. Three U.S. archdioceses and several dioceses have no public list at all.
Similarly inconsistent are Catholic religious orders — groups of priests and religious brothers who often span church geography, hew to a more specialized mission and follow in the mold of a particular saint.
While diocesan priests run most parishes in the Chicago region, the orders oversee most local Catholic high schools.
The Jesuits — who run Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in the Pilsen-Little Village area, Loyola Academy in north suburban Wilmette and St, Ignatius College Prep on the Near West Side — have had an expansive list since 2018 that not only includes names, but relevant dates and assignment histories.
The Dominicans, who run Fenwick High School in west suburban Oak Park, promised a list, backed off, then created one in 2022 — though critics contend names are still missing.
The Irish Christian Brothers, who run Brother Rice High School on the Far Southwest Side and St. Laurence High School in southwest suburban Burbank, created a public list in 2014 as part of a bankruptcy case fueled by sex abuse claims.
Their list includes members of the order with two or more allegations of sex abuse — but it doesn’t differentiate among members who faced accusations that were found to have been credible, those facing claims deemed not credible and those facing accusations that weren’t ever investigated.
The order has been silent on members with a single accusation.
Spiritans, and how they handle clergy sex abuse
The Spiritans — one of the orders governing Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union where Washington and Pope Leo XIV, then known as Robert Prevost, attended at different times — not only have no list, they won’t answer questions about how many offenders have been in their ranks.
“For reasons associated with due process and criminal investigations, the U.S. province does not publish the names of those members accused,” Fogarty said, adding his order nonetheless “treats every allegation of sexual abuse with the utmost seriousness, consistently reaching out and offering to meet personally with every individual survivor with a view to support and healing.”
“To do so, it has strong and thorough policies and procedures for responding to, investigating, and reporting all allegations of sexual abuse against a member.”
His group maintains its public silence on alleged offenders despite a recommendation several years ago from a consortium the Spiritans belong to, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, encouraging the orders to come clean with publicly accessible lists.
The nonprofit church watchdog Bishop Accountability found 22 Spiritans with claims of abuse nationwide, including Washington and a second Spiritan priest who also landed on the Chicago archdiocese list in 2022, the Rev. Robert Spangenberg. He died in 2006 and once served as chaplain at St. Francis De Sales High School on the Southeast Side.
The hundreds of variant Catholic organizations in the U.S. also have leeway in how they substantiate sex abuse claims, with Fogarty saying his order understands “credible” to mean “that the allegation was supported by either an admission by the individual to the abuse, or by an examination of the evidence through a comprehensive canonical or criminal investigation.”
The Midwest Augustinians, who run Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox and St. Rita High School on the South Side, have said, “In determining whether an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor is ‘established,’” they “adhere to the canonical standard of ‘moral certitude.’”
“An allegation is ‘established’ when ‘there is objective certainty that the accusation is true and that an incident of sexual abuse of a minor has occurred.’”
A public list maintained by the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina, where Washington’s sex abuse complaints emerged, includes both diocesan and religious orders, and its website says a credible finding “is not a finding of liability or guilt; it means that the allegation at least seems to be true and/or offers reasonable grounds to be believed.”
Helping individual archdioceses, dioceses and religious orders examine misconduct accusations and determine whether they are legitimate are their own “independent review boards” that generally differ in composition by church jurisdiction.
“All of the criteria and all of the determinations are different, and nobody has a clear definition of what ‘credibly accused’ is, yet they all use it,” says Patrick Wall, a former Benedictine monk who now works as an advocate at the Delaware-based law firm Grant & Eisenhofer that handles church sex abuse claims.
“It all ends up making children less safe because there’s no clear standard for either investigating, reporting or penalizing priests who commit child sexual assault. There’s no consistent practice amongst all of the review boards either in the dioceses or religious orders in the United States.”
Anne Barrett Doyle of Bishop Accountability added, “It’s all highly subjective.”
Kathleen McChesney, Chicago’s former FBI chief who’s been involved in church reform efforts since leaving the government, says, “There’s no universal standard after all these years. … Obviously, there is a need for standardization in fairness to the victims and the accused.”
Washington is still under the purview of a review board, Fogarty said, subject to “annual reviews.”
Spiritans say claims against Washington not credible, restrict him anyway
That points to another curiosity in Washington’s case that some church experts say they’ve rarely or never seen: Even though the Spiritans say the allegations against Washington aren’t credible, Washington is still subject to a number of restrictions as if they were, including being barred from public ministry because of the accusations.
After the ongoing church abuse crisis exploded into wider public view with a series of 2002 Boston Globe stories, any priest in America with even a single credible allegation of child sex abuse was barred from ministering in public any longer. Before then, abusers were often hidden or transferred, and some church leaders wrongly believed clergy offenders could be sidelined, psychologically rehabilitated and then returned to the pulpit.
Church reformers are pushing the new pope to mandate that “zero tolerance” standard around the globe, with clergy sex abuse believed to be rampant in parts of the developing world where Catholicism is growing or otherwise entrenched. Homegrown priests are sometimes the problem there, as are visiting clergy from the U.S. or elsewhere.
Before he was ordained a priest in the early 1990s, Washington moved to Tanzania as a deacon, where he “worked with the Maasai and Chagga tribes, and I loved it,” he told the Chicago archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic New World, in 2009. “It helped me get in touch with both my American part and my African part.”
As a priest, Washington ministered from 1992 to 1999 at St. James/Resurrection Parish in Dayton, Ohio, according to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
The Catholic New World said Washington “became a pastor of two merging African-American parishes after a few years” in Dayton and “also ministered in Harlem before returning to Chicago in 2005.”
By 2009, Washington was pastor of two South Side congregations, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Ambrose parishes, and was “director of formation for Spiritan seminarians who live in both parishes and study here.”
He grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and told the church newspaper: “My father’s side of the family was Catholic from St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. My mother’s family was mostly Methodist and Baptists from Charleston. She converted to Catholicism about the time of their marriage. My grandfather was a Baptist minister. Ecumenism was a daily part of living.”
“During grade school I met my first Black priest,” who had been “a Spiritan assigned to our parish,” Washington said. “Most people in Charleston had never seen a Black priest. It was a novelty. It was his openness to us as altar servers. He would say, ‘Keep studying and doing the best you can because God has something in store for you.’ I thought, ‘If he can do it I can do it.’”
Estimates put the number of Black Catholics in the U.S. at around 3 million, with more than 60 million U.S. Catholics in total. As of a few years ago, there were believed to be about 250 African American priests. The Spiritans have long focused part of their ministry on Black communities.
By 2013, Washington was serving at St. Mark the Evangelist Church in New York City, a Black parish that well-known Black nationalist Marcus Garvey used as a meeting place years earlier, and that’s been called “the mother church of Black Catholics.”
Washington charged with sex abuse
While Washington was ministering there in 2017, he was arrested and charged with sexually abusing two boys in the 1980s while he was a young adult volunteering at a parish in Charleston before ordination and they were training to be altar servers.
The accusers had come forward as adults, but the case was able to be prosecuted because there’s no statute of limitations in South Carolina. The case, however, was dropped by authorities the next year.
Court records show one charge was dismissed because of “elements not met” while other charges were dismissed because the defendant “met all requirements of victim so victim did not want to prosecute.”
Washington didn’t return calls from a reporter.
Fogarty said: “Upon receiving the initial allegation, we promptly informed the archdioceses of Chicago, New York and Cincinnati, where he had worked, in accordance with our policy.”
He added: “The alleged conduct took place when Freddy Washington was a church volunteer in his early 20s in the early 1980s. This was a number of years prior to him joining the Spiritan congregation and approximately a decade before his ordination as a Spiritan priest in 1992.
“Secondly, there have never been any other allegations of sexual misconduct against Fr. Freddy involving minors, apart from these two in Charleston. Not in Chicago or anywhere else.
“Thirdly, the U.S. Province did not pay any sum of money to the accusers or make an apology to them, as they never initiated a claim.
“Fourthly, while maintaining his innocence throughout, Fr. Freddy entered into an agreement, involving permanent removal from priestly ministry and safety plan restrictions, that was acceptable to all concerned. This scenario also reflects how seriously we take these type of allegations.”
Fogarty says that “according to the terms of his safety plan, Fr. Freddy does not have unsupervised access to minors.”
Washington “only provides internal services to our congregation in capacities that do not involve minors. He remains under constant monitoring and is held accountable to the highest standards of our congregation. Furthermore, he is subject to annual reviews by an independent review board.”
Fogarty wouldn’t explain why Washington agreed to such restrictions if he and the order maintain he’s innocent.
Where Washington is now
The Spiritans’ voicemail system indicates Washington works in the group’s archives office. He lives in a Spiritans complex in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, where spiritual retreats are sometimes held, and that’s about a half-hour drive from Duquesne University that the order founded. Both are within the confines of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, which maintains a public list of credibly accused clerics, but only diocesan priests from that area.
A spokeswoman for the diocese says, “The Spiritans are an independent Catholic religious community — not under the supervision of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. They have a retirement home within the boundaries of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. The Spiritans have informed the diocese that Washington would be residing in that retirement home. Washington is not permitted to perform any ministry in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.”
The Archdiocese of New York, which includes St. Mark the Evangelist where Washington once served, has a public list but is one of eight or so U.S. archdioceses with lists that likewise only include diocesan clergy and no religious orders.
“We would have made no independent determination on whether or not he was credibly accused,” a spokesman for the New York archdiocese says.
The Cincinnati archdiocese is one of roughly two dozen U.S. archdioceses to have a public list with diocesan clergy as well as religious orders — even those who may have offended elsewhere but once served in that domain. But a spokeswoman says her organization is “unable to find record that the Congregation of the Holy Spirit has ever informed the Archdiocese of Cincinnati that Father Washington has been credibly accused of abuse.”
“Should they provide that information we would include him on our list of clerics not incardinated in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati who have a substantiated allegation of abuse.”
The Charleston diocese list doesn’t mention Washington.
“It is our understanding that Freddy Washington was found credibly accused by the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, also known as the Spiritans, and is on the Archdiocese of Chicago’s credibly accused listing,” a Charleston diocesan official says.
“Regarding our diocese … Mr. Washington did not serve as a priest in our diocese and therefore would not be included in listings of any kind involving priests serving in the diocese.”
In releasing his list in 2019, Charleston’s then-bishop wrote to his flock: “It is my fervent hope and prayer that publishing this list will help bring healing to the victims and their families who have been so grievously harmed by the betrayal of priests and church leadership.”
Cupich long resisted putting names of accused members of religious orders who served in his territory on his public list, opting to only include diocesan clergy — those who reported to him or his predecessor archbishops and whose ministry was generally confined to the Chicago area.
His argument was that the orders don’t answer directly to him, so those groups are best suited to publicize their own people who have offended. Cupich clung to that explanation for years, even though religious orders needed permission from the local bishop of a diocese or archdiocese to minister on his turf.
In 2009, while he was the top bishop in Rapid City, South Dakota, Cupich was asked under oath in a lawsuit whether he “ever personally considered, as the bishop, to publish the names of credibly accused Jesuits, Benedictines or any other religious order who have offended in this diocese.”
Cupich — whose diocese at the time included Native American communities where religious order priests staffing missions and schools had molested children — responded, “No, I haven’t because that is a matter for the religious order to do.”
That mindset changed in 2022 as Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s report was about to come out criticizing local church leaders for continuing to hide names of alleged clergy offenders. Cupich quietly added the names of numerous accused child molesters from religious orders to his list, including Washington and Spangenberg. However, Cupich only added religious order priests and continues to omit numerous religious brothers from orders for reasons he’s never explained.
Raoul’s investigation, initiated by his predecessor, was spurred at least in part by a grand jury report delving into clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania. That report stated that in 2009 a man relayed that “when he was 15 to 16 years of age, he and Spangenberg engaged in many types of sexual encounters.”
“Spangenberg also paid the boy a finder’s fee for him to locate younger hustlers … to have sex with Spangenberg. The boy reported that Spangenberg enjoyed … sniffing glue while Spangenberg performed oral sex on him.”
“Additionally, Spangenberg would pay for his sexual services with money from the collection box (typically one-dollar bills) and would even pay the boy in drugs and alcohol.”
He’s not on the Pittsburgh diocesan list, but is included on a list maintained by the Archdiocese of Detroit, where he served in 1975 for about six months, the year after his ordination.
Records show Spangenberg also served within the Diocese of Venice, Florida, but isn’t on its public list, though he’s mentioned in a 2020 report by Florida’s Office of Statewide Prosecution.
The Spiritans, sometimes known as the Holy Ghost Fathers, aren’t a household name in Chicago, but they are prominent overseas. Founded in 1703, they have more than 2,700 priests, religious brothers and “lay associates” serving in more than 60 countries and focusing on “evangelization and missionary service in areas of the world where the church is newly established.”
Pope Leo XIV inherits church’s abuse crisis
The order was among a handful of Catholic organizations studied by the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors under Pope Francis. The commission released findings in October that underscore the slow nature of reforms under him and the challenges facing his successor, Pope Leo XIV, on the abuse crisis.
Referring to the Spiritans, and the order’s policies and training on child protection across the globe, the Vatican report “notes cultural resistance to safeguarding in members’ countries of origin and in contexts where members work — as well as among members themselves, some of whom see safeguarding as an imposed Western ideology.”
“This resistance highlights the challenges in bringing safeguarding guidelines to life, in changing the attitudes of the members, and in building an overall culture of safeguarding in the congregation,” which is divided into geographical components called provinces.
“Frequent changes of major superiors at the provincial level make it difficult to dedicate time for their safeguarding training in a sufficient manner,” the report says. “The congregation reports vestiges of a culture of clericalism” — where a sense of elitism and privilege persist among clergy, who feel they can do whatever they wish — “with some members.”
The Vatican report says there were “31 cases received and transmitted” to the Vatican office that handles sex abuse cases from 2014 into 2024.
Ana Nunes de Almeida, a sociologist in Portugal who has studied clergy sex abuse, said the findings of the Vatican report show the church is “a mess” — and she questions whether leaders have the will, or the power, to really clean things up.
Speaking generally about the church, she says: “They don’t train the bishops, they don’t train the priests, they don’t train the people in parishes in a lot of parts of the world. It’s shocking.”
The worldwide leader of the order, the Rev. Alain Mayama, wouldn’t answer questions, but his Rome office sent the Sun-Times a statement in response to the Vatican report saying: “The Congregation of the Holy Spirit has participated on a voluntary basis in the collection and transmission of information for the work of the Pontifical Commission. It is nevertheless disappointed that the presentation of information concerning the Congregation in the Commission’s Annual Report was presented without putting it into perspective with other religious institutes, without an interpretative framework and that, as a result, certain information may lead to approximations or even misinterpretations.”
The Spiritans have long had a presence in Ireland, where records show there have been dozens of accused members — including three priests accused of molesting Chicago native Derek McCarthy while he was a boy attending a Catholic boarding school there called Rockwell College.
Among the accused clerics: the Rev. Naos McCool, who also served in the U.S. and died in December.
Communications from McCarthy’s attorneys to the order outlining the accusations say: “Whether in Fr. McCool’s private room at the St. Joe’s dormitory, in the office of the mail Rockwell building under the stairs next to the library, in the library, or elsewhere, Fr. McCool’s sexual abuse of Derek would involve beatings, open mouth kissing with tongue penetration, mutual masturbation and oral sex including ejaculating in Derek’s mouth.”
“Fr. McCool sexually abused Derek whenever he could, sometimes twice a week for approximately two years. Derek was abused at least once a week for an entire school year, and he estimates that McCool abused him on more than 100 occasions.”
The case was settled out of court for 100,000 euros, records show.
The Irish province maintains no public list of credibly accused clergy, and won’t answer questions about its alleged offenders.
McCarthy, who says a fourth man who wasn’t a priest also molested him at the school, has been pressuring Irish authorities to prosecute the only Spiritan he’s accused who is still believed to be alive.
McCarthy says he wants to meet Pope Leo XIV to impress on him the damage caused by the sex abuse he suffered, and offer to help the church reform itself.
“They’re not doing it,” McCarthy said. “What are you doing to make sure this never happens again, in 100 years, 200 years?”