The local paper for the Upper East Side THE WOMAN WHO PIONEERED ABSTRACT PAINTING ◄ P.16
WEEK OF FEBRUARY
7-13 2019
‘IN A WORD, IT’S A HORROR.’ RELIGION Two elite Jesuit schools confront painful revelations about priests from their past
I don’t know what else you can do but be honest about it.”
BY EMILY HIGGINBOTHAM
The Metropolitan Republican Club was vandalized prior to an October 2018 event featuring Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes. Photo: Michael Garofalo
A GOP CLUB DIVIDED POLITICS Ian Walsh Reilly is the new Metropolitan Republican Club president, emerging as victor in contested election in the aftermath of Proud Boys violence BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
A hotly contested Jan. 30 election to determine the next president of the Metropolitan Republican Club highlighted tensions among members, returning the historic political organization to the public eye four months after chaotic street violence erupted on the Upper East Side following a club event featuring the founder of a far-right group. The bitterly fought campaign, which pitted two supporters of President Donald Trump against one another, divided the club’s membership and raised questions about the Republican Party’s future in Manhattan — mirroring currents that have roiled the GOP nationally. Metropolitan Club members elected Ian Walsh Reilly, 38, to serve as president at the club’s annual meeting. Reilly defeated his opponent,
Robert Morgan, 66, by a margin of 324 to 270. Some members cast the contest as a generational struggle between Morgan, a past club president who was supported by a number of notable figures within the Republican Party establishment, and Reilly, who is seen by some as representative of a more strident brand of far-right politics. Contested elections have been unheard of in recent decades at the storied Metropolitan Club, historically a bastion of establishment Republicanism stretching back to the days when it counted President Theodore Roosevelt as a member. Reilly, in a message to supporters on his campaign Facebook page, which features a sketch of President Donald Trump in profile and the slogan “Keeping the Met Club Great,” warned of “anti-Trump forces of the Republican Establishment [...] reasserting themselves and plotting a takeover of the Metropolitan Republican Club.” Reilly’s campaign won public support from the rightwing agitator Milo Yiannopoulos, who denounced Morgan’s campaign
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The sexual abuse crisis that has plagued the Catholic Church for decades has now reached two prominent Manhattan high schools. A list naming Jesuit priests, who were identified by the Society of Jesus as having credible allegations of sexual abuse, was published on January 15, revealing that Regis and Xavier high schools were among the institutions where some of these accused priests spent parts of their careers. The step toward transparency comes as the Catholic Church deals with new investigations by federal and state law enforcement. The release of the list has also forced local institutions to review how they communicate about the abuse crisis, especially when the accused were once a part of their community. Out of the 50 men on the list made public by the Northeastern Jesuit Province, four worked at Regis between the 1950s and 80s, and seven worked at Xavier between the 1940s and early 2000s. One priest spent time at both schools. The time the priests spent at either school varied, with some serving at the institutions for only a couple years and others for more than a decade. In some cases, priests had decades-long careers in which they spent time at several Jesuit schools in New York and the northeastern United States. Many of the priests are now deceased, while some have been defrocked, have left the ministry or have been restricted from service involving minors. Regis officials declined to be inter-
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Paul Scariano, Xavier High School alumnus and parent
Xavier High School reached out to students, parents and alumni in the wake of the release of the names of Jesuit priests accused of sexual abuse of minors. Photo: Courtesy of Xavier High School viewed for this story, but provided Our Town with a statement. “There are four men on that list whose allegations pertain to incidents while at Regis. There is also one man who is on that list who worked at Regis at one time and has an allegation against him from some later time and place,” the statement said. “No abuse is acceptable, and we are horrified and distressed by each one of these allegations. All victims of sexual abuse are in our prayers.” The accused abusers and their tenure at the Upper East Side school include: John Farrand, 1957-61; John Gallen, 1957-60; Edward Horgan, 195457, 63-70; James Kuntz, 1983-84, 8994; and Robert Voelke 1969-80. All but Kuntz (who pleaded guilty to a child pornography offense after his time at Regis and Xavier) are dead.
Officials at Regis have reviewed the school’s policies and continue to work to create a safe place for students, according to the statement. As for Xavier, none of the accusations of abuse against the priests stem from their time at the Chelsea prep school, according to its president, Jack Raslowsky. Raslowsky said the province gave him a week’s notice that Xavier would appear on the list, but he said he had
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