Plan to sanctify the Second Vatican Council by canonising Jesuit Council father runs into a moral stumbling block

Jesuits: Is the beatification of Pedro Arrupe in jeopardy?

Introduced in 2013 and opened in 2019, the cause for beatification of the world superior of the Jesuits, Pedro Arrupe (1965-1983), during the Second Vatican Council, could be stalled. He was reportedly warned of sexual abuse committed by a seminarian in New Orleans, but did nothing to prevent his ordination—and the seminarian continued to commit abuse after being ordained a priest.

This person is Donald Barkley Dickerson, ordained in 1980, banned from public ministry in 1986, and who, according to the Jesuits themselves, is among the Congregation's known abusers.

According to the released documents, "Pedro Arrupe received a letter dated December 20, 1977, detailing his concerns about allegations that Dickerson had sexually abused minors. The letter from Father Thomas Stahel, Arrupe's fellow Jesuit and then a senior official—or provincial—of the Jesuit region that included New Orleans, stated that Dickerson had recently gone on a retreat where he had "made sexual advances toward a 14-year-old boy." The boy, a student at the Jesuit Brebeuf Preparatory School in Indianapolis, had told his parents, who, in turn, reported Dickerson to Stahel, according to the letter. In his letter, Stahel claimed to believe the boy, as he was at least the third minor to accuse Dickerson of sexual abuse."

Following this letter, Dickerson's ordination, scheduled for 1977, was postponed. He underwent psychiatric treatment, but he was ordained in 1980 and appointed to the Jesuit college in Dallas, from which he was expelled in July 1981 after further abuse. "Stahel received a letter from Postell informing him that Dickerson had been expelled from the Dallas preparatory school. The parents of a minor had reported an accusation against Dickerson to the school, whose principal had discovered previous accusations against the priest, reported the Dallas Morning News."

Again, the Jesuits simply transferred him elsewhere, to the clergy of St. John Berchmans Cathedral in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was eventually suspended from public ministry and dismissed from the order in 1986, "after the Shreveport church received a letter from a family accusing him of 'touching and touching' their son inappropriately, according to the Morning News. It was at least the seventh documented allegation against Dickerson, not including the underage Loyola New Orleans student, who filed a complaint in 2024." The congregation paid him $10,000 the following year and sent him for treatment at a center for priest abusers, the Foundation House in Jemez Spring, New Mexico, run by the Servants of the Paraclete Foundation from 1947 until its closure in the 1990s.

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