Former Marquette President Robert Wild asks for name to be removed from residence hall

The Rev. Robert Wild, one of Marquette University's most celebrated former presidents, asked the school to take his name off a new residence hall Tuesday, acknowledging for the first time that he mishandled accusations of sexual abuse against three members of his Jesuit order in Chicago more than 25 years ago.   

Wild — who still works at Marquette in fundraising — directed the activities of Jesuits in northern Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and southwestern Ohio as provincial superior of the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) from 1985 to 1991.

"During my six years in office, accusations of sexual abuse of minors were lodged against three of our members. Looking back, I would have handled certain aspects of those cases rather differently than I did then," Wild said in a letter to Marquette President Michael R. Lovell and the school's board of directors.

Although he doesn't mention any priests by name, one of the cases involved perhaps the most notorious of the Chicago clergy offenders, Donald J. McGuire, a spiritual adviser to Mother Teresa. 

After releasing Wild's letter and Lovell's statement, the university said it would have no further comment. Wild's name already has been removed from the new residence hall, which opened this fall, according to the Marquette Wire, the university's student newspaper.

The announcement comes as Catholics reel from a new wave of accusations that have brought down an American cardinal and raised questions about what the church's highest leaders knew and when. 

Names of former bishops dating to the 1940s were stripped from church buildings in Pennsylvania last month, anticipating the release of a grand jury report exposing decades of mishandled sexual abuse cases.

In his letter to Marquette leaders, Wild referred to a recent letter from Pope Francis on the sexual abuse scandal in the church, and said he made his decision "after much thought and prayer and careful consideration."

"Therefore, after careful discussion of the matter with Marquette University’s leadership, I formally request that the University remove my name from the building that was recently named for me," Wild wrote.

Lovell said in a statement that the board of directors unanimously agreed with the request and the residence hall that opened last month as the Robert A. Wild S.J. Commons will now be known as The Commons.

"We are in agreement with Father Wild that this is the right decision for both Marquette and survivors of clergy abuse," Lovell said. "Anyone who knows Father Wild understands that he values the Gospel message of love and forgiveness and we move forward together as a Marquette community in that spirit," Lovell said.

"We offer our prayers for continued strength and healing for all survivors of clergy abuse."

Call for apology to victims

Wild's letter asking for his name to be removed from a place of honor on campus failed to specifically acknowledge what he did, said the Midwest director of an advocacy group for sexual abuse victims.

Wild should personally apologize to those victimized by priests who molested children while he was in a leadership position, said Peter Isely, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

"The word 'mistake' does not seem to resonate or speak to moral responsibility," Isely said. "He knew what they had done. He didn't go to civil authorities. That's a moral decision; not a mistake. That's a deliberate decision to either circumvent the law or turn these child molesters over to civil authorities. They went on to abuse other children."

One priest in particular — McGuire — was among the most notorious of the Chicago offenders.

Wild did not name McGuire in his letter to Marquette but may have been referring to him in one part of his statement:

He said "the restrictive measures" he thought "quite sufficient to restrain the behavior of one of those priests, for example, proved in practice to be insufficient to do so."

"I very much regret that and apologize especially to those victimized for my mistakes in that regard," Wild said.

The Rev. James Connell, a member of Catholic Whistleblowers and a critic of the church's handling of the sexual abuse scandal, said Wild's letter was "a step in the right direction, but we need to know more about what happened and what he didn't do correctly and what he should have done."

He said if any of the three Jesuits Wild referred to in his letter are still in ministry they "need to be removed."

According to Isely's group, when Wild took over the Chicago Jesuit province in 1985, he became the next in a long line of provincial superiors who were aware of McGuire's history of sexual abuse but neither removed him from ministry nor warned the people with whom he worked.

Wild did try to impose some restrictions on McGuire after a 1991 incident, according to a sworn deposition Wild gave in 2009 as part of a lawsuit.

That year, a retreat administrator in California raised concerns about McGuire's behavior with a boy there, which led to a meeting with Wild, at which McGuire denied any sexual contact with the boy.

Questions have lingered 

Wild was president of Marquette University from 1996 to 2011 and from 2013 to 2014.

At a news conference on the Marquette campus in 2011, clergy sex abuse survivors called for Wild  — then Marquette president — to apologize for leaving McGuire in active ministry when Wild led the Chicago Jesuits.

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They also called on Wild to join in calling for more disclosure by the Jesuits about abusive priests within the order.

Isely repeated that call on Tuesday.

Isely also suggested Wild be an example for former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, whose name is on St. John Cathedral’s Weakland Center, 831 N Van Buren St.

Weakland was criticized for his handling of sexual abuse allegations related to William J. Effinger, who was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in the late 1980s at his home in Sheboygan. He eventually ended up in prison while close to 10 others would allege the priest abused them as children during his 30-plus years in ministry. 

McGuire died in January 2017 at age 86, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator. 

McGuire was convicted in Wisconsin in 2006 of sexually assaulting boys from Illinois in the 1960s, and in federal court in Illinois in 2008 of molesting another boy during trips abroad from 2000 to 2002. He was dismissed from the Jesuits in 2007, defrocked in 2008 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. 

McGuire played off his Mother Teresa connection to attract more families whose sons became his victims on worldwide travels. 

"He had McGuire," Isely said of Wild. "He covered up for him and moved him. It's a crime to commit those acts. I don't know why it's not a crime to cover them up." 

The building initially named for Wild opened with great fanfare in August. The $108 million, state-of-the-art residence hall is just south of West Wells Street between North 17th and 18th streets. 

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Wild's Marquette tenure

Wild is among the most prominent presidents in Marquette's history.

During Wild's tenure as president, alumni, parents, and friends invested more than $800 million, with $375 million in new construction and campus renovations.  External research awards more than doubled, the value of the endowment increased 130 percent.