Seton Hall defies cardinal’s order in sexual abuse investigation

Cardinal Joseph Tobin promised “full cooperation” from the Catholic university in New Jersey, but the school is pushing back.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark promised a thorough investigation into clergy abuse at Seton Hall University, but the school blocked a key witness from participating. | Gregorio Borgia)/AP

Politico

May 23, 2025

By Dustin Racioppi

Cardinal Joseph Tobin of New Jersey left for Vatican City earlier this month to help select the next pope — a rare moment on the global stage for one of the most powerful Catholic leaders in the United States.

Back home, Seton Hall University — the oldest Catholic diocesan university in America, where Tobin personally oversees both governing boards — was preparing to defy him.

A day after the new pontiff was chosen on May 8, attorneys for the university blocked a key witness from participating in a clergy abuse investigation Tobin had ordered, according to a court filing. That inquiry centers on whether Seton Hall’s new president, Monsignor Joseph Reilly, was installed despite past mishandling of abuse allegations.

Now Tobin’s own archdiocese is trying to regain control.

The moves expose a conflict at the highest levels of Catholic education — pitting Tobin against the university he oversees — and threatens to unravel his public promises of transparency with the school’s “full cooperation.”

Joseph Nyre, the university’s former president, had been scheduled to speak with investigators until Seton Hall intervened. In his first public comments since leaving the presidency, Nyre said in a statement: “Either the Cardinal has been overruled by his own board, including the bishops who sit on it, or the openness he promised is being applied only when convenient. The public deserves to know which it is.”

Seton Hall did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Tobin, the archbishop of Newark, ordered a comprehensive investigation into clergy abuse in February, several weeks after POLITICO reported that Reilly was found in a 2019 inquiry to have not properly reported abuse allegations years prior as a seminary leader. That earlier investigation came in response to sexual abuse claims against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the longtime archbishop of Newark and Washington, D.C. It found decades of sexual harassment and a “culture of fear and intimidation” under McCarrick, according to a summary published by the university. McCarrick died last month at age 94.

Reilly, who once served as a secretary to McCarrick, was not accused of abuse himself. But an action plan adopted by the university recommended he be removed from school boards and not hold leadership positions there. He took a year-long sabbatical and, after Nyre’s departure, became university president last year with unanimous support of the school’s Board of Regents and Tobin, who called Reilly “the right person at the right time for Seton Hall.”

To read the entire article, go here.