Louis P. Rogge
At least two children were sexually abused in the Diocese of Joliet because Bishop Joseph Imesch opened the church’s doors to a convicted abuser—a member of the Carmelite religious order named Father Louis Rogge. In 1974, Rogge pleaded guilty to child molestation in Georgia. He was sentenced to six years’ probation, of which he served just two before returning to unrestricted ministry in the church. The Carmelites would later point to “the standards and policies of that day” as an excuse for this decision.
Apparently operating under those same “standards and policies,” Bishop Imesch welcomed Rogge to the diocese in late 1992—authorizing him to engage in public ministry without taking any precautions to protect children. The bishop said he was “happy” to have Rogge. That sentiment wasn’t universal, though; the Archdiocese of Chicago rejected Rogge’s application for faculties around the same time.
In June 2002, 28 years after Rogge pleaded guilty to child molestation, the Carmelites claimed only to have just discovered evidence of his conviction during a review of their files—an incredible assertion given Rogge was an ordained Carmelite at the time he pleaded guilty. The Carmelite provincial asked Bishop Imesch to “revoke [Rogge’s] faculties to function as a priest in the Diocese of Joliet” but did not disclose the reason why. There is no evidence Bishop Imesch acceded to the Carmelites’ request to remove Rogge from public ministry.
In September 2005, a father told the diocese that Rogge had sexually abused his two sons when they were children in 1996 and 1999. The diocese shared this report with the Carmelites and the Will County state’s attorney. Rogge confessed to sexually abusing the boys in their bedrooms in Bolingbrook. In December 2006, the state’s attorney charged Rogge with four counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse based on their investigation of the father and sons’ allegations. In April 2007, Rogge pleaded guilty to two of these counts. He died while awaiting sentencing for these crimes.
The Diocese of Joliet sought to wash its hands of Rogge’s sexual abuse. It issued a statement in December 2006 asserting that, while “[n]obody likes to see somebody else injured,” the diocese did not have “any dealings with Father Rogge.” That is false; Rogge, of course, had been granted faculties to minister in the diocese by Bishop Imesch. And despite Rogge’s confession, the diocese refused to add Rogge to its public list for more than 15 years. The diocese still did not add Rogge to its list when the Attorney General’s investigators informed it in January 2020 that he was on the Archdiocese of Atlanta’s list of priests with credible allegations of child abuse. Only after the Carmelites disclosed Rogge as credibly accused of child sex abuse in November 2020 did the diocese follow suit in February 2021. In the interim, for all practical purposes, a reasonable person might well have assumed Rogge remained in good standing with the diocese notwithstanding his multiple crimes against children.