Dr. Jack Downey

Jack Downey is associate professor of Religion and Classics, and John Henry Newman Professor in Roman Catholic Studies, at the University of Rochester. He is the author of The Bread of the Strong: Lacouturisme and the Folly of the Cross, 1910-1985 (Fordham University Press, 2015).

Supported Project:

Dr. Kathleen Holscher and Dr. Jack Downey, “Desolate Country: Mapping Catholic Sex Abuse in Native America”

Since the mid-1980s the crisis of Catholic sexual abuse in the US has developed via a succession of breaking stories about the violation of minors and administrative cover-ups in archdioceses from Los Angeles to Boston. Because these revelations arrive piecemeal, they are treated as local instances comprised of groups of bad priests and their bishops. This conceals a pattern that defines Catholic sex abuse in the US: priests and religious are accused of abuse with greatest frequency in places that historically encompassed missions to Native communities. Centering the geography of Native America, and Catholic institutions situated there, exposes a consistent tradition of abuse, and introduces colonialism as a structure underpinning its systemic character.

This project will use digital mapping to reconceive the study of Catholic abuse in terms of colonial space, movement, and institutions. The map will visually demonstrate how abusive priests clustered in regions – particularly rural Indigenous communities – and how they remained in circulation after their abuses became known to superiors. This content will be hosted on a public online site, allowing users to see patterns of movement, dating back to the early twentieth century. Although this grant project will focus on the “credibly accused” list published by Jesuits West in 2018, as further disclosures are made we hope to build out the platform to include more regions and Catholic religious communities.