Rev. Andrew Greeley Passes Away; Church Reflects on Outspoken Priest
The Rev. Andrew Greeley, a best-selling Roman Catholic priest who sometimes criticized the hierarchy of the church, especially over the child sex abuse scandal, has died aged 85 at his Chicago home.
"Father Greeley was an often controversial priest, with deep convictions and a ready wit. He dedicated his life to research, writing and speaking. In his last years, the words he could still respond to were prayers, especially the Eucharist. We should keep him in our prayers now," said Francis Cardinal George OMI, Archbishop of Chicago.
The Associated Press noted that he authored more than 50 best-selling novels, which have been translated into 12 languages, and wrote a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times for a number of the years.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"He served the Church all those years with a prophetic voice and with unfailing dedication, and the Church he and our parents taught us to love is a better place because of him. Our hearts are heavy with grief, but we find hope in the promise of Heaven that our uncle spent his life proclaiming to us, his friends, his parishioners and his many fans. He resides now with the Lord of the Dance, and that dance will go on," his family said in a statement.
Greeley, who became a priest in 1965, also worked as a sociology professor at the University of Arizona and as a researcher at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. He had been in a bad condition since a traumatic brain injury in November 2008, resulting from a fall, and spent a number of months in rehabilitation, but never regained full cognitive function.
The Catholic priest often criticized the church for failing to deal with clergy who abuse children, a problem that increasingly grew over the decades.
"The sexually maladjusted priest has been able to abuse the children of the laity and thus far be reasonably secure from punishment," Greeley said back in 1992.
Other times, like at a 2000 workshop presented during the annual Chicago Catechetical Conference, Greeley stressed the importance of the Catholic tradition: "The Catholic Church in the United States needs to open its doors to beauty especially the beauty of Catholic tradition. The beauty of the Catholic heritage, flawed as it is, attracts, enchants and will not let people go, no matter how hard they try to escape it."
Greeley's last book, Chicago Catholics and the Struggles Within Their Church, was published in 2010.
The Archdiocese of Chicago added in a statement that Fr. John Cusick, a friend of Greeley and fellow Chicago priest, said that Greeley would most like to be remembered "as a priest, and a priest of Chicago."
