Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet in Illinois

During the 17th century, present day Illinois was part of the French colony of New France. The Diocese of Quebec, which had jurisdiction over the colony, sent numerous French missionaries to the region. After the British took control of New France in 1763, the Archdiocese of Quebec retained jurisdiction in the Illinois area. In 1776, the new United States claimed sovereignty over the area of Illinois. After the American Revolution ended in 1783, Pope Pius VI erected in 1784 the Prefecture Apostolic of the United States, encompassing the entire territory of the new nation. In 1785, Bishop John Carroll sent his first missionary to Illinois. In 1787, the area became part of the Northwest Territory of the United States. Pius VI created the Diocese of Baltimore, the first diocese in the United States, to replace the prefecture apostolic in 1789.[3][4]

With the creation of the Diocese of Bardstown in Kentucky in 1810, supervision of the Illinois missions shifted there. In 1827, the new bishop of the Diocese of St. Louis assumed jurisdiction in the western half of the new state of Illinois. In 1834, the Vatican erected the Diocese of Vincennes, which included both Indiana and eastern Illinois.[5] With the creation of the Diocese of Chicago in 1843, all of Illinois was transferred there from the Dioceses of St. Louis and Vincennes.

The construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal in northeast Illinois during the 1830s and 1840s attracted many Irish Catholic immigrants into the Joliet area. The Diocese of Chicago assigned John Plunkett to minister to the workers. He established St. Patrick Church as the first church in the Joliet area. With the industrialization of Illinois and the emergence of Chicago as an important center of commerce for the nation, the new churches and missions in the Joliet area flourished. Its congregants were mostly newly arrived immigrant laborers from Europe and several generations of local farmers. In 1920, the Sisters of Saint Francis of Mary Immaculate founded New College in Joliet.[6]

In 1948, Pope Pius XII established the Diocese of Joliet in Illinois, removing its territory from the Archdiocese of Chicago, to meet the demands of the exponential growth of Catholicism in the region. He named Martin McNamara of Chicago as the first bishop. McNamara selected St. Raymond's church as the cathedral. By 1950, the 540-seat church proved inadequate and he began planning a new facility. He consecrated the new Cathedral of St. Raymond Nonnatus on May 26, 1955.[7] In 1985, Pope Paul VI appointed Romeo Blanchette of the Archdiocese of Chicago as an auxiliary bishop in Joliet.

After McNamara died in 1966, Paul VI appointed Blanchette as the second bishop of Joliet in Illinois. He served as bishop until 1979, resigning due to health issues. Blanchette's replacement, Auxiliary Joseph Imesch of the Archdiocese of Detroit, was named by Pope John Paul II. Soon after arriving in Joliet, Imesch worked with other community leaders to create the Daybreak Shelter for the homeless.  Every month, Imesch would visit the shelter to serve meals and converse with its clients. He started the first Diocesan Annual Appeal in 1986 and in 1996 founded the Joliet Diocesan Catholic Education Foundation. Imesch started a sister relationship with the Diocese of Sucre in Bolivia, helping build and staff a hospital there.[8]

With Imesch's retirement in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI named Bishop J. Peter Sartain of the Diocese of Little Rock as the next bishop of Joliet in Illinois. Four years later, Benedict XVI appointed him as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Seattle. His replacement in 2011 was Bishop Robert Conlon of the Diocese of Steubenville. Conlon took a medical leave in 2019 and then resigned the next year.

Pope Francis in 2020 named Auxiliary Bishop Ronald Hicks of the Archdiocese of Chicago as the next bishop of the Diocese of Joliet in Illinois. As of 2023, Hicks is the current serving bishop of Joliet in Illinois.

Reverend Alejandro Flores, a priest at Holy Family Church in Shorewood, was accused in January 2010 of sexually abusing a boy starting in 2004, when the boy was ten years old, while Flores was a seminarian. A few days after learning of the accusation, Flores attempted suicide.[9] He pleaded guilty in September 2010 to one count of criminal sexual assault. After his release from prison in 2013, Flores was deported to Bolivia.[10] He was laicized in 2020.[11]

In September 2012, Bishop Conlon reinstated Reverend F. Lee Ryan, a diocese priest, to ministry and assigned him to serve homebound parishioners. The diocese had suspended Ryan in 2010 from ministry in Crescent City after determining a sexual abuse allegation against him from the 1970s was credible. According to The Huffington Post, Conlon ruled that since child molestation was not a serious crime under canon law in the 1970s, the diocese could only limit Ryan in ministry and not remove him completely.[12] After receiving negative feedback within the diocese to his decision, Conlon reversed himself and permanently removed Ryan from ministry that same month.[13]

In a 2015 lawsuit brought against the diocese by 14 sexual abuse victims, it was revealed that Bishop Blanchette ignored the inappropriate behavior of certain seminarians, allowing them to be ordained as priests for the diocese:

• Blanchette allowed the ordination of Lawrence Gibbs in 1973. As a seminarian, he had been expelled from Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary due to behavior issues. The seminary warned Blanchette to watch Gibbs. After receiving a sexual abuse accusation about Gibbs in 1980, Bishop Imesch transferred him to another diocese. Gibbs resigned from the priesthood in the 1990s.[14]
• Blanchette allowed James Nowak to be ordained. The Capuchin Order had dismissed Nowak as a seminarian due to his admitted failure to keep his vow of chastity. In 2012, the diocese received its first allegation of sexual abuse of minors by Nowak, then a priest at Saints Peter and Paul Parish in Naperville.[15] The diocese immediately removed him from ministry. After investigation, it was determined that Nowak had abused eight children.[16][17]

In April 2015, the diocese settled with the 14 sex abuse victims, including those of Nowak and Gibbs, for over $4 million.[18]

A list released by the diocese in August 2018 revealed the names of 35 clergy who served in the diocese during a 70-year period and were credibly accused of sex abuse.[19] That same month, the diocese announced that it had agreed to pay $1.4 million to two brothers and another male who said they had been sexually abused by Reverend Leonardo Mateo during the early 1980s. The plaintiffs stated that Mateo would take them for ice cream and swimming, then sexually assault them at his residence.[20] After the diocese started receiving complaints about Mateo in 1991, he admitted some guilt. The diocese removed him from ministry. Before the end of the year, Mateo returned to his native Philippines.[21]

In October 2019, Conlon and the diocese were named in a $100,000 sexual abuse lawsuit. The plaintiff was Barry Lowy, the legal guardian of a developmentally disabled man at Shapiro Developmental Center in Kankakee. The assailant was Reverend Richard Jacklin, who was discovered performing oral sex on the man in 2017. The lawsuit charged the diocese and Conlon with improper vetting of Jacklin's background and negligent supervision of him.[22] Jacklin was convicted of sexual assault in 2022 and in January 2023 was sentenced to 18 years in prison.[23]

In March 2023, the estate of a young man sued the diocese, claiming that he had been sexually abused by Alejandro Flores in 2008. The lawsuit said that Flores forcibly touched the genitals of the alleged victim, then eight years old. After suffering from depression and other problems for years, the young man died in 2022 at age 21 at a rehabilitation center in California.[24]

1. Martin Dewey McNamara (Dec 17, 1948, – May 23, 1966)
2. Romeo Roy Blanchette (Jul 19, 1966, – Jan 30, 1979)
3. Joseph Leopold Imesch (Jun 30, 1979, – May 16, 2006)
4. James Peter Sartain (May 16, 2006, – Sep 16, 2010), appointed Archbishop of Seattle[25]
5. Robert Daniel Conlon (May 17, 2011, – May 4, 2020)
6. Ronald A. Hicks (July 17, 2020 – present)[26]

• Romeo Roy Blanchette (Feb 8, 1965, – Jul 19, 1966), appointed Bishop of Joliet
• Raymond James Vonesh (Jan 5, 1968, – May 7, 1991)
• Daniel Kucera (Jun 6, 1977, – Mar 5, 1980), appointed Bishop of Salina and later Archbishop of Dubuque
• Daniel L. Ryan (Aug 14, 1981, – Nov 22, 1984), appointed Bishop of Springfield in Illinois
• Roger Kaffer (Apr 25, 1985, – Aug 15, 2002)
• James Edward Fitzgerald (Jan 11, 2002, – Jun 5, 2003)
• Joseph M. Siegel (Oct 28, 2009, – Oct 18, 2017), appointed Bishop of Evansville[26][27]

Richard E. Pates (Dec 27, 2019, – Jul 17, 2020)[26]