Donald McGuire (Jesuit)

McGuire was born on July 9, 1930, in Oak Park, Illinois. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1947 and was ordained a priest in 1961. After living in Germany and Austria in the early 1960s, McGuire took up a teaching post in 1965 at Loyola Academy, a high school in Chicago, but moved to Loyola University Chicago in 1970. In 1983, he was appointed spiritual director of the Missionaries of Charity, an order founded by Mother Teresa, While at the University of San Francisco, McGuire developed a "roving ministry" leading spiritual retreats for wealthy Catholics. and directing retreats for both lay people and members of Mother Teresa's order became a significant part of his career. The retreats, based on "Ignatian spirituality", According to The Boston Globe investigative journalist, Michael Rezendes, McGuire's reputation was as a "globe-trotting spiritual retreat leader who counted Mother Teresa among his fans". As a result of his later convictions for child sexual abuse, McGuire was dismissed from the Jesuits in 2007 and laicized in 2008. In 2017, McGuire died in prison. ==Abuse and convictions==

Twenty-eight men alleged that they were subjected to child sexual abuse by McGuire, perpetrated between the 1960s and 2004. McGuire allegedly developed a pattern of persuading a family to let their teenage son intern with him and then sexually abused the boy. In 1993, McGuire was again removed from his ministry as a result of allegations of sexually abusing a boy in the San Francisco Bay Area. Responding to these events, Mother Teresa wrote to the Jesuits in 1994 urging his reinstatement and asserting that the allegations were untrue. McGuire was convicted after a jury trial in 2006 of five felonies related to the sexual assault of two Loyola Academy students that occurred in the 1960s. He was sentenced to seven years in prison followed by twenty years of probation. In 2012, the Chicago Jesuit official who had received Mother Teresa's letter in 1994, Fr Bradley M. Schaeffer, issued a statement apologizing for his failings, stating, "I deeply regret that my actions were not enough to prevent him from engaging in these horrific crimes". Documents supporting claims that the Chicago Province of the Jesuits concealed McGuire's crimes over forty years contributed in the order paying $19.6 million in 2013 to settle lawsuits brought by six sexual abuse victims. A further lawsuit was filed in 2019 against the Jesuits alleging that it failed to remove him from his post when it should have. ==See also==