The Chicago Tribune profiles the chancellor for the Archdiocese of Chicago:

The crisis began with the arrest of Rev. Daniel McCormack, accused of sexually abusing two boys.

Then came allegations that the church did nothing to stop him. More boys came forward with allegations. Angry parishioners stopped going to mass and demanded answers from Cardinal Francis George–answers he did not have.

As the situation spun out of the cardinal’s control, Jimmy Lago, chancellor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, proposed an unprecedented solution. In early February, Lago insisted that the archdiocese open itself to scrutiny by giving outside investigators unlimited access to confidential files and personnel. The request caught the cardinal by surprise.

"He didn’t obviously know where I was going with this," Lago said later. In his characteristic gruff tone, he continued: "He doesn’t expect me to tell him what he wants to hear. That’s never been our deal. Our deal has been I tell him what he needs to know, and he makes up his own mind."

George agreed to the plan, and the findings released five weeks later revealed more than 30 instances in which church employees disregarded red flags–egregious errors that might not have come to light had it not been for Lago. Even victims advocates were thankful, though they wished the action had been taken far earlier.

As chancellor, Lago is, in many ways, the cardinal’s right-hand man. Overseeing more than a dozen departments–including evangelism, finances and schools–he is one of the most influential laymen in the nation’s Catholic hierarchy and the most powerful parishioner appointed by the cardinal in his 2.3 million-member flock.

The article is a profile of an individual, but it still falls short in details on exactly what Lago is doing/proposing in terms of the sexual abuse issue, except in this one case.

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