Most Rev. Jerome Hanus

However, the past eight years - the period Most Rev. Jerome Hanus has led the Archdiocese of Dubuque - have been filled with challenge, controversy and change for the Roman Catholic Church and its local archdiocese.

During a 90-minute interview with the Telegraph Herald, the archbishop discussed several issues, including the "unfairness" of education funding. He is particularly critical of sales taxes to pay for education, describing them as unjust to poorer families.

Here are the highlights.

TH: What led you to the religious life?

Hanus: I had always been interested in the priesthood, but I had the choice of becoming a diocesan priest or becoming a monk. I spent a lot of time weighing that, where would I fit better, where is God calling me.

When I went to the seminary, I became acquainted with Benedictine monks. So I became more and more intrigued with the idea of becoming a monk. After my sophomore year of college, I decided to try it out. You have a one-year trial called a novitiate. At the end of that year, I felt that this was where I belonged.

So, in September of 1961, I made my first vows as a monk. You do that for three years. After three years, then you have to make your decision: Are you going to profess vows for life? I did that in 1964.

By that time, my superior, the abbot, had decided that I should go to Rome to study. So I was in Rome when I made that decision. I studied there for four years.

TH: Have you ever thought about what else you might have done if you didn't become a monk or a priest?

Hanus: Oh, sure. I looked in the want ads when I was in college. I think one thing I would have liked to do in college was to be a teacher. I enjoyed mathematics and I thought it would be kind of good to be a teacher of mathematics.

The only job I ever asked for in the monastery was to be in charge of the dairy herd. I grew up on a farm and I enjoyed working with cattle. That's the only job I ever volunteered for, when the abbot said we need somebody to run the dairy. But he didn't think that was a very good job for me. By that time, I'd had four years of graduate study. He said, "We didn't send you away to graduate study to milk cows." But I would have enjoyed doing that, also.

TH: When you were interviewed (in 1995) after your first year in Dubuque, you indicated that you logged 25,000 miles on your car that first year. Are you still traveling to that degree?

Hanus: Oh, it's more than 20,000 a year. It's probably 23,000, 24,000 each year that I've been here. The archdiocese covers 30 counties. I have gotten to every single parish, visited every single parish at least once and several of them many times.

TH: What do you know now that you didn't know when you first arrived eight years ago?

Hanus: I supposed I didn't know how much Iowa was changing in terms of people and economy and culture. It's not only Iowa; I think the whole Midwest is changing, but it seems that Iowa is being influenced by these changes. The people are no longer making their living by being small farmers. I think probably still up to 30 years ago, that was a major component of the population - that people lived and earned their living by being farmers. As a result, the rural population was stable, was relatively at peace.

But now, I think, even in some of our rural communities, a lot of people do not make their living by farming. So the family farm has declined appreciably in Iowa and in these 30 counties.

The other thing would be the changes in the economy in cities like Waterloo. I didn't know when I came eight years ago what Waterloo had experienced in terms of the work force being almost decimated by major companies pulling out or reducing their presence.

I would say those would be the two things - the changes in the rural population and then even the urban areas, especially Waterloo.

Dubuque stays pretty much even. Dubuque is a progressive, prosperous city. I think we have a lot of visionary people here that are working hard to see that Dubuque does continue to grow. I think that's very hopeful. I didn't know that eight years ago. That Dubuque was going to see the kind of exciting growth that we do see now.

TH: To what degree should or could the Church be advocates for some of those people who have been negatively affected by the changes?

Hanus: Well, the Church has a whole body of teaching on social justice and how the gospel and how religion can have a positive impact on issues of work, economy, family, community. We are an advocate for people who are experiencing these kind of changes. In the farm economy, we know that the issues are very, very complex.

The Church really more walks with people and tries to help them understanding what are positive developments, what are negative developments and how to respond to those.

TH: Issues facing the Church, the issues with the clergy - sexual abuse - got lots of headlines. But I know your work goes beyond that. What are some of the other challenges that you are addressing and tackling as archbishop?

Hanus: I think that the biggest challenge that we face is responding to the changes in population - where the people are and how they are organized in parishes and communities.

Catholics are spread across the 30 counties with more than 200 parishes. Now, that's a very high number of parishes for the number of Catholics that we have (about 220,000). Up to this summer, we had 213 parishes. They average 1,000 people per parish. Across the country, the average size of a parish is 2,000.

TH: That's people, not families.

Hanus: People. Some of the parishes are very small. They may have less than 100 people. That becomes very difficult to keep up the life of a parish in terms of programs, services and in terms of finances.

Our strategic planning has been addressing that changing situation. It's the changes in population of people and the, of course, changes in professional leadership. Whether it's sisters or deacons or priests, somebody has to be a leader of these parishes and some of them are just too small to afford a full-time professional person.

That's been the greatest challenge - how do you reorganize so that you can have the full Catholic experience in a community?

We call it the clustering process. How parishes can be urged and invited to work together so that they can have the full Catholic life.

Just right around Dubuque, to the south in Jackson County, we have five parishes that, altogether, are less than 500 families, while Resurrection (in Dubuque) is close to 2,000 families. Those five parishes at one time had five priests and probably 20 sisters working there. They were able to do it because the salaries were very, very low - especially the salaries of sisters. They could maintain a Catholic school and have the richness of that kind of Catholic culture.

That has all changed. We don't have that many sisters working any longer and the number of priests has changed from 500 to 150.

Now, we obviously have a lot of lay people who have received training and are willing to exercise leadership. We have permanent deacons which we didn't have 25 years ago and that's a big help. We have close to 80 permanent deacons. We have probably 2,000 lay persons teaching or being principals in our schools. But they have to support their families, so as a result, the salaries are much higher than what the teachers and the priests received in the years past, so the whole financing of the Church has taken on quite a different character.

That was one issue that we discussed that we decided very consciously about four years ago to look at the compensation of all Church workers and tried to bring our salaries and our compensation packages in line with the rest of society.

TH: An outgrowth of that was the consolidation of the Dubuque Catholic schools from the Metro system to the Holy Family district. After a year-plus since that consolidation, what's your assessment of how that has gone?

Hanus: Overall, I'm very positive about what has been happening and the way people have been working together. I think the quality of education has been enhanced by this. I think the way the schools are organized and the collaboration across the entire field of Catholic schools here in the Dubuque area, all that has been a plus. There obviously have been growth pains and challenges and we continue to face those, but I think that it is a plus for Catholic education.

We still face major issues of social justice. I think that our country is really behind the times. I think the issue of justice for education is really one that we have not faced in this state and in this country. I think the way we fund education is very unjust. I think we need to continue to address that.

I think society has an obligation to help parents educate their children and parents have the right to choose the kind of schooling that they want. I think we Catholics are heavily penalized by the current system. It simply is an unjust system, and it's a thing that we have to continue addressing.

TH: What would you like to see the public sector do to address that?

Hanus: I think our Legislature, our elected officials, should try to have a fair system of funding education. We do have tax tuition credit, but that's a meager attempt. We Catholics are double-taxed. We pay for public education and pay for our own education.

Much of the taxation is very regressive. I think what we ought to have is a fully-funded education by society and each parent should have the choice where they want to educate their children. Most other countries have it that way. The United States doesn't.

TH: You have had some challenges just to even maintain the status quo, let alone get to fully-funded status. You had to send some letters or make a few phone calls to governor's office to convince him it was not a good idea to cut some of the transportation funding.

Hanus: That was an incredible, unjust proposal to take away the busing from private schools. That's a typical example of the injustice of our method of funding education.

TH: Do you see more challenges to the status quo?

Hanus: Oh, yeah. I think another example would be the penny sales tax. That's regressive taxation. Why people would advocate something like that is really hard to fathom. It's just compounding an unjust system by taxing the poor to fund education. It's a regressive tax. Why don't we finance our education on a fair way, equitably for all people?

TH: So, say, when the Dubuque School District and Western Dubuque come up with a referendum in December to renew the request for a one-cent sales tax, would that be something you would not advocate?

Hanus: The Church takes a position on a matter of principles. We say taxation should be equitable, should be fair and should not be regressive. Simply an across-the-board sales tax is a regressive tax.

The Church doesn't take positions on particular referendum or doesn't endorse or oppose a particular candidate. We don't take positions on that. But we say, "Here's the teaching, this is the teaching in regard to social justice." Part of the social teaching of the Church is that taxation should be fair and an income tax is fairer than an across-the-board sales tax.

I think the Legislature made a terrible mistake when they allowed this to happen. In fact, there are people in the Legislature who feel that way and are working to not extend this unfair method of taxation.

TH: I need to ask you now about some of the challenges that the Church and the archdiocese in particular have faced on the issue of clergy sexual abuse. You appointed the review panel a few weeks ago. What are your hopes and expectations for this panel?

Hanus: Well, the review board has two or three tasks. First, to review and revise the policies that we have had in place for almost 10 years now. They will be looking at that policy and seeing if there are ways that we can improve it. Secondly, they have the task of assessing allegations that would be coming forward from someone. A third task would be to review an individual's fitness for ministry. Now, as we go through the months and years ahead, there may be other challenges that we face. I may take that to the review board and say, "Help us with this."

I think that we've done fairly well in the archdiocese. We've responded to situations appropriately and taken the necessary actions. It's not as if we're operating in some kind of a crisis mode. The policy that we have had in place has worked quite well, but it certainly can be fine-tuned and adjusted to bring it into conformity with the charter, which was developed and accepted in Dallas last June.

The charter stated that any clergy person or other Church personnel who has been found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor will be removed from any ministry. We've had that in place for many years now. That's not going to entail any change for us. We state very clearly in the policy that nobody found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor will be reassigned.

TH: You may be effectively creating a mandatory-report situation by the very makeup of your board in that you've got an assistant county attorney on the board. I would think that through her professional responsibilities that she probably would have some responsibility for report, would she not?

Hanus: Well ... there are also professional counselors on the board. If they become aware of abuse of a minor, they have to look at their own responsibilities.

But it's really before it would get to the board that we're talking about mandatory reporting. So that if somebody comes to us and says, "I believe that my child has been abused by this person in the Church," and they say to us, "But we don't want you to take this to any place further," we'll say to them, "Sorry, we're going to take it to the public authorities." Even if they ask us, "Let's keep this confidential," we're saying, "No. According to our policy, if you inform us of the possibility that somebody is being abused, we will take it to the public authorities. So the people are going to have to know that, that when they relate to us, it's the same, in effect, as relating to a mandatory reporter. Now, that wasn't the case in the past.

TH: The approach of the Church in cases like this, going back many years, say prior to '93 and '89 and so on, my understanding is there was a belief that abusers could be rehabilitated, that there could be some counseling and so that would help them remain fit for parish life or duties where they might come into contact with young people. Has the attitude or believe in that changed? Is that part of the reason for the change in policy?

Hanus: I think it has changed in the professional community of counseling. Psychological theory has changed in regard to reformability or curing something like pedophilia. I think probably 30 years ago people were hopeful through intense kind of therapy and treatment that somebody could be cured of pedophilia. Now, I think probably for 10 years, the opinion has become pretty strong that it's impossible to cure somebody. That's a change that has happened through experience and through research, if you will, by professionals - not by the Church but by professionals. But insofar as the Church may use the professionals 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago and now, our attitude has changed.

I think 30 years ago, professionals thought they could cure people. If the archbishop then sent somebody away for treatment, then he would have received a report, "We consider that this person presents no danger because he has successfully completed this treatment." We wouldn't get that kind of report in regard to a pedophile. In regard to a person who abuses adolescents, minors, that's not strictly speaking pedophilia. There is not the same clarity among the professionals. Some of them believe that this illness can be controlled and maybe cured. So there's a difference of opinion there.

Then, obviously, in relationship to adults, there are some people who believe you can't control your behavior. Hopefully, most people believe you can control your behavior. The same kinds of strictures, the same kind of restrictions would not be applied across the board to all forms of sexual abuse.

TH: If a priest is removed from his parish assignment and is sent off for treatment, does that individual remain on the parish payroll? Are they still affiliated with the archdiocese in some way?

Hanus: Church law requires the bishop to take care of a priest because that priest has devoted his whole life - he said I'm going to give my whole life in service to the Church. He says that when he's ordained. He makes a promise of obedience and a promise of service. He doesn't make a promise of poverty, but he knows that he's not going to be reimbursed with great generosity, so he's given his whole life for the Church. In response to that, the Church - in a diocese, the bishop - has the responsibility of caring for that person. So that's why I had the responsibility of making sure there's a pension plan, there are insurance programs in place.

So, if a priest is removed from a parish because of sexual abuse, then I still have a responsibility to care for him. The Church has a responsibility to care for him. No, they don't have to be given an assignment. A priest doesn't have a right to be a pastor. If he is not qualified to be a pastor because of psychological illness, then he's not assigned; but we still have an obligation to care for him.

TH: How many priests are you involved with, where you continue the benefits ?

Hanus: Our pension plan now is giving a full pension to 94 people ... Since I've been here, I think just two - Father (Timothy) DeVenney and Allen Schmitt - have been the two that I removed from parishes because of sexual abuse.

Now the third one, Michael Fitzgerald, I removed him from the parish but there was no clear allegation, no credible allegation of sexual abuse. No victim has ever come forward or no parent of a victim has ever come forward. But it was because of the publicity surrounding that, it was impossible for him to function as a pastor. People didn't want him as a pastor. Some of them did, but many of them didn't. So what I did with him is ask him to go into training to be a hospital chaplain. That's what he was planning on doing. (Editor's note: Father Fitzgerald died in a 2001 traffic accident.) He was going to be gainfully employed as a priest because there was really no allegation. The report from the treatment center was that he did not present any danger to minors or vulnerable persons. That's the case, I think, one could say an injustice was done to a priest by irresponsible conduct of some people. Somebody was out to get him.

TH: (Regarding the appointment of a victim to the panel.) That did speak to the diversity of the panel.

Hanus: I think any person, whether you're on the panel or whether you're working at the Church or have any leadership position or just being a part of society, if you don't have an experience of walking with the victim, I think it is something that one should try to have. Many people cannot appreciate what an individual goes through. I think that to have that person on the board makes the board, hopefully, more effective.

TH: We hear from victims from years ago, say prior to '93, who expressed bitterness and still bear the scars of how they were treated. In fact, this summer, the archdiocese was named in a lawsuit on a case related to something that apparently happened or started 50 years ago. Is there something more that the Church should do for people who still are bearing the scars from years ago?

Hanus: Certainly we have been trying to respond very sensitively to anybody that comes forward. But that's another part of our response, an enhanced program, which a person would be called a coordinator of assistance to provide a pastoral response to victims, survivors and their families. I'm working on that with the help of professionals, counselors, so that they would be ready to respond.

That's something new. In the past, people would just be in touch with us here, or they might come to their pastor and say, "I'd like some help. This happened to me 20 years ago, 30 years ago, or this happened to a member of my family 20 years ago," and we would provide a pastoral response, but also say, "This probably needs some professional help, so if you'd like to go into counseling, we would be happy to provide that." We've done that for 20 years, at least. But we didn't have a person designated as the coordinator of assistance.

TH: This spring, when you had to go up to Allamakee County to announce the removal of one of the priests, you did issue a statement asking -

Hanus: Any other victims...

TH: - any other victims to come forward. That seemed to strike a contrast as to how the Church used to handle that 10, 15, 20 years ago - at least prior to '93.

Hanus: We did the same with the St. Columbkille case (in 1996 in Dubuque). We had a public meeting where people were invited to share their feelings. And then anybody who felt that they had been abused to go to counseling and send us the bill. That probably was the first time it was that public.

TH: It does represent a change in attitude. Would that be fair?

Hanus: In practice. The fact that the victims came forward was really a blessing, to stop any further abuse. The proper way to respond to that was to say, "We're here to help you. We're very sorry this happened. This is not acceptable and this man will not be assigned as a priest any place after that."

Allamakee County was not a current case. The person that came forward had been abused almost 20 years earlier, so we weren't dealing with ... we didn't know if there were any current victims and that was part of the reason to go and make the announcement myself and to say, "If there's anybody else who feels that they were abused, please come forward." No current victim has come forward, which is somewhat reassuring, that this particular person had gotten his life in order.

TH: This crisis must take some toll on you personally. To see some of your Church members, some of the priests or other people in the Church, to have their lives turned upside down by this. You have victims and you have people who have been assigned to parishes under your supervision. I'm interested in your personal reaction to this.

Hanus: I would say that one feeling that I have is ... let me just bluntly say, is anger that some of the bishops haven't handled these situations better than they have. I think we've done fairly well here. I think Archbishop Kucera did fairly well. He was ahead of his time in many respects.

This was pretty well known already in the late 1980s. So, when I see the bishops were reassigning priests who were clear pedophiles in the '90s, that makes me pretty angry. That's been one feeling that I've had personally is, how could they possibly have done this in the '90s? I can understand how they would have done it in the '70s, and maybe even in the '80s, but how they could have done it in the '90s is beyond me. To have to endure all this pain in the year 2002, when this should not have been happening in the '90s, the pedophile priests should not have been reassigned.

TH: Were you and some others who have had policies and enforced them ... was there a little bit of finger-pointing (at the national bishops conference in Dallas)?

Hanus: No, we didn't have to do the finger-pointing. It was pretty well known, publicized, rather clearly across the country. Still to have to endure that, when basically you had your house in order.

That's been difficult for all of our priests. Ninety-nine percent of the priests are very good and faithful priests who live holy lives and work very hard. And to have their profession - if you will, their calling - tarnished, that was very, very painful for them and continues to be very painful for them. To have to endure that when it shouldn't have happened, it's reason for anger and frustration.

TH: If there's one thing you could change about your job or your role, what might it be?

Hanus: I'm basically an optimistic person. I think the Lord has blessed me with a positive attitude. Up to this point in my life, most of the aspects - frankly all of the aspects - of whatever I've been asked to do have been things that have brought me a sense of satisfaction, even a sense of joy. I don't really look at different aspects of my life or of my work as things to be eliminated, so I really have not thought about that.

Things I would like to do better: I would like to have more time to write and to share my understanding of Church life and of world situations with the people through the written word. I don't give that high priority as I would like to. But on the other hand, I respond to requests such as this (interview) or requests of being out with the people and feel that that's more important.

I think in the past, there were too many letters from bishops and too many words that were read and as a result, they really didn't have much effect. I decided that I wasn't going to follow that approach, that I wasn't going to be issuing a lot of statements or pastoral letters. That it's better to be active among the people and give priority to that.

TH: Do you have any free time?

Hanus: Oh, sure. Every morning I play racquetball.

TH: Do you?

Hanus: I played this morning - not every morning, at least three times a week. We have a group that plays early in the morning, 6 o'clock at Loras. The new president plays, too. He and I are in our 60s and we play against a couple of guys that are in their 40s and we consistently beat them, so it's good for the ego.

TH: Is there any bad language that occurs during those matches?

Hanus:(Laughs) No. Most of them call me "archbishop." Most of them, not all of them. Not all of them call me "archbishop." Some of them say Jerome: "Nice shot, Jerome." No, no bad language. Oh, "Oh hell" or something like that ...

Then I have another well-known hobby that gives me free time and that is I garden. Around my house, I have a good amount of vegetables that I spend time with. So those are two things that I do for my own relaxation.

TH: I don't want to get you in trouble with your "boss," but the Holy Father is 82 and, obviously, he's had some health problems. I know you've had occasion to meet him and visit with him. Do you feel that he still has the energy to maintain that big a job?

Hanus: He's able to do a lot of things quite well, but he doesn't have the same energy that he did 20 years ago. That's understandable. Even 10 years ago. But that's between him and God and who else he involves in that. He doesn't ask my opinion on that.

Every five years, we have to report to him and I've done that now since '88 and '93 and '98. I was with him in 2000, also. Each time, you can see that he's getting weaker and weaker.

You do a one-on-one with him; then bishops that are there at the time, a dozen of them, they have lunch with him. The first two, in '88 and '93, he was very engaged in conversation and remembered what you had said to him in your private meeting with him, when he came together in the group. But in '98, he was ... he still carried on a very intelligent conversation in English, which is not his native language, but you could see he was much weaker than he had been before. I thought to myself, "You don't have to do this for me." With all the other stuff he's got to worry about, I wasn't going to bring him some new problem.

TH: What will the Archdiocese of Dubuque be like 25 to 50 years from now?

Hanus: Our planning, which was expressed in Vision 2000, looked at from 1998 to the maximum 2005. What we saw there, was, "How do we keep vital our current parishes and schools and other institutions?" In the last two years, we've said we can't stay with that plan, we have to look a little bit further. So we have a rather clear map of the archdiocese to the year 2010.

We're saying that if everything continues to go the way it is now in terms of population, in terms of professional leadership, priests, deacons, sisters, pastoral associates - all of those things - we would see the archdiocese organized in what we call pastoral units. We're saying it would be about 75 pastoral units rather than the 200 parishes that we have now.

So we have a very clear map that has been communicated across the archdiocese. It hasn't appeared in the paper because it's still pretty fluid, but we're organized in 12 deaneries and each deanery has a council, which is primarily lay people. All those people have seen that picture of what the archdiocese, as far as parish life, might look like in the year 2010. What it's going to look like in the year 2050, I won't venture a guess because we don't know what the world situation is going to be.

Now, if we have a war or if we have an even worse recession than we went through, if the economy becomes even more troubled, well, that could have a tremendous impact on what Iowa looks like. And the Church doesn't have the power to control the economy. It doesn't have the power to control world events. We live in this world.

Copyright 2002 Telegraph Herald

More of the TH interview with Archbishop Jerome Hanus
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