BALTIMORE — The Archdiocese of Baltimore added 42 names Friday to its list of church employees who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse, including that of a longtime theology dean and professor at Xavier University of Louisiana, the nation’s only Catholic historically Black college.
Father Phillip J. Linden began teaching theology at Xavier in 1991, after served as a priest in Baltimore from 1969 through 1986, according to the Archdiocese of Baltimore and his religious order, the Josephites. Linden is accused of abusing a boy in the 1970s when he was a pastor at St. Francis Xavier parish, according to the archdiocese.
Linden, who is in his 80s, has not been criminally charged. The Archdiocese of Baltimore reported the allegation to law enforcement when it received it, a spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the university declined to comment on the allegations. Linden worked at the university from 1991 through May 2018, according to a university spokesperson. He was still listed Friday in the university’s catalog as an associate professor.
Attempts Friday to reach Linden, his family and the Josephite order were not immediately successful.
Other than Linden, the vast majority of the newly added names were previously publicized, either in news reports or in the Maryland Attorney General’s Office report on the history of clergy sexual abuse in the archdiocese. That report issued in April identified 36 priests, brothers, nuns, deacons and lay people such as teachers who had been accused of abuse but who were not included at that time on the list the archdiocese maintains.
Friday’s additions, approved at the direction of Archbishop William Lori, were the largest single expansion of the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s credibly accused list since it first published 57 names in 2002 as part of its response to the national clergy abuse scandal. The church’s list now includes more than 180 names.
Survivors of abuse and advocates have demanded Lori add names to the archdiocese list, even before the attorney general’s office released the public version of its report.
The attorney general’s report called on the archdiocese to be more transparent in listing credibly accused employees and clergy, and Friday’s additions sought to met that request, about seven months since the report was completed.
“The decision to add the names is also an acknowledgment of a recommendation by the Maryland attorney general that the Archdiocese expand its voluntary list,” wrote Christian Kendzierski, a spokesperson for the archdiocese, in an email to The Baltimore Sun. “The addition of these names to our public database builds on the Archdiocese’s long-standing commitment to transparency, healing and to ridding the Church of the scourge of child sexual abuse.”
Of the 156 names in the attorney general’s report, 46 had not been previously listed by the archdiocese. A Sun review of 36 of those people found that most of them had died. The other 10 names were redacted, but The Sun has since confirmed and published their identities.
The archdiocese has maintained its list, separate from that of the attorney general, with its own set of criteria — namely that it included only people who were clergy, meaning priests and brothers. Friday’s additions expand that criteria to include deacons, nuns and lay people, but it would be up to the archdiocese’s Independent Review Board to determine if the wider criteria is used going forward.
Nonetheless, the additions mark a step toward recognition of some of the horrors survivors have dealt with. Among others, the archdiocese’s list now includes John Merzbacher, a former Catholic schoolteacher who spent the last 28 years of his life in prison for the rape and torture of a student. Merzbacher died May 12 in prison.
In order for a name to go on the archdiocese’s list, a complaint or report has to be made to Catholic officials. That complaint is investigated, reported to law enforcement and evidence is presented to the Independent Review Board, an interfaith group of eight community members from legal, academic, health care, social work and law enforcement circles. Lori appoints the members to the board.
The board meets quarterly and votes as to whether it considers the allegations credible. Lori then determines what course of action to take, if any, regarding making a name public or disciplinary action. Priests or brothers who died before a single allegation of child abuse was received aren’t added to the list unless a third party corroborates an allegation, or a second allegation is made against the same person.
As well as the 36 unredacted names from the attorney general’s report, the archdiocese added Friday one of the 10 redacted names to its credibly accused list: Father Joseph O’Meara.
Identified in the report as abuser No. 155, O’Meara was removed from ministry in 2020 at St. Agnes/William of York Parish in Catonsville after three women said he had inappropriately touched them. The attorney general’s report says O’Meara inappropriately touched a 7-year-old girl in 1984, sliding his hand up her leg to her genitals under a table at a dinner.
An attorney for O’Meara, Michael P. Mays, declined to comment Friday on O’Meara’s addition to the archdiocese’s credibly accused list, but previously confirmed O’Meara is one of the redacted names. Kendzierski, the archdiocese spokesperson, declined to comment on O’Meara being one of the redacted names, citing a Baltimore Circuit Court judge’s confidentiality order regarding an ongoing process over how much more of the report should become public.
The archdiocese previously said it could not reveal the names of the redacted abusers, citing the court’s order. The attorney general’s office, subject to the same order, disagreed with that stance, saying the church is uniquely positioned to release any redacted name because the information would come from its own files.
Michael Joseph Miller was also added Friday to the credibly accused list, despite not being included in the attorney general’s report. A former member of the Conventual Franciscan Friars, Miller was arrested in Connecticut in 2011 on child pornography charges and in 2013 was sentenced to five years in prison plus 20 years of probation. Miller was a faculty member at Archbishop Curley High School during the 1994 and 1995 school years, and again from 2003 to 2006. He also celebrated Mass occasionally at St. Isaac Jogues in Carney and St. Margaret in Bel Air from 2003 to 2006.
The Baltimore archdiocese acknowledged his arrest at the time, but stated it did not have any knowledge of incidents involving children here. On Friday, the archdiocese said a man came forward earlier this year to say Miller solicited and sent inappropriate photos to him when he was a student at Archbishop Curley in the mid-2000s.
According to the Hartford Courant, Miller chatted on Facebook with seven teenagers about sexual issues, inviting one to come over and watch porn and engage in sex. Pornographic videos of children and adults turned up on computers he used, according to news coverage of his trial. The Hartford archdiocese said he was removed from the ministry in July 2011.
The Connecticut sex offender registry listed an inmate release date of December 2017, and online court records show that as of January 2020, he remained on probation. The registry gives his address as that of the RECON retreat in Robertsville, Missouri, a residential facility for troubled clergy affiliated with the Servants of the Paraclete organization. It describes itself as a Catholic congregation of priests and brothers who provide care for their counterparts in need.
Miller could not be reached for comment. Messages left Friday for the Servants of the Paraclete were not immediately returned.
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