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Bishop’s Name Removed from University LibraryThe board of directors of St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, voted to remove the name of the late Bishop Gerald F. O’Keefe from the university’s library August 3. The name was physically removed shortly after the board’s decision. The board acted after considering the request of Mark Powell, a St. Ambrose alumnus and a victim of sexual abuse by priests in the Davenport Diocese in the late 1970s, when O’Keefe’s was bishop there. Powell said that he reported the abuse to O’Keefe, who moved the priests to other churches but took no other punitive action, the Quad-City Times reported August 3. “Libraries are places of learning and it is my hope that through this historic measure, those in authority learn they have primary responsibility for the safety and welfare of our children,” Powell wrote in an August 4 letter to the Times. “This action is a clear signal that there are consequences for inaction as well as actions.” The school had no policy for naming or renaming campus buildings, but the board of directors wrote one in response to Powell’s request. A subcommittee investigated the request and both it and the board voted unanimously to remove the name. “We’re not making a judgment on Bishop O’Keefe because he isn’t here to defend himself,” Martin J. Amos, current bishop of the Davenport Diocese, said in the August 8 Catholic Online. Amos acknowledged, however, that documentation showed that O’Keefe was aware of abuse happening while he headed the diocese. “While a very difficult decision, the board felt it was the right thing to do for the university, as well as a step taken in the spirit of promoting healing within the diocese and, in a larger sense, for all victims of abuse,” school officials wrote in an August 3 posting on the SAU web site. The library, which had been named after O’Keefe in 1996, will be referred to as the St. Ambrose University Library until the board decides on a mechanism for renaming it. Posted on August 10, 2007; revised August 13, 2007. |
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