If you were an altar server or a kid in the parish under Father Daniel Holihan, we believe you.

Eleven years he was pastor of Our Lady of the Snows in Garfield Ridge. The chancery heard about him in July 1986 and left him there until the summer of 1990. Forty people have reported him since, by the Illinois Attorney General's count, and in November 2025 a man who'd been a Quigley student in the early 1980s took the Archdiocese of Chicago to court over him. If some part of your childhood ran through his parish, or his cottage, this is for you.

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This applies to you no matter what

He is dead, since October 2016. The case you'd bring was never going to be against him anyway. It's against the Archdiocese of Chicago, which was told about him in 1986, was told again in 1990, and did not take him out of public ministry until June 2002.
Nobody ever charged him. DCFS found credible evidence in June 1990; the state's attorney chose not to indict. A prosecutor's decision in 1990 says nothing about what happened to you, and a civil case doesn't need one.
You told someone at the time and nothing came of it. A school principal told the chancery in 1986. Six boys spoke up in 1990. He was still saying Mass twelve years later.
You weren't at Our Lady of the Snows. He was in seven other Chicago parishes, there was the cottage at Wonder Lake, and the man who sued in November 2025 says it started at Quigley, where Holihan was never even assigned.
You are asking for a brother, a husband, a friend who can't do this himself. Reach out anyway.

Father Daniel Holihan: what the public record says, and when

None of what follows is ours. It's the Illinois Attorney General, the Archdiocese's own list and files, the reporters who read them, and every line links to where it came from. Holihan was never charged, never tried, never convicted. A DCFS finding is a DCFS finding, a cardinal's decree is a cardinal's decree, and a name on a list is that list's opinion. The November 2025 complaint is a complaint. The word for all of it is allegation.

July 1986

The Archdiocese received reports about Holihan, then pastor of Our Lady of the Snows: from a fellow priest, from the school principal about 12-year-old altar servers, and in a letter to Cardinal Bernardin. Among the parish children, the Attorney General's report says, he was known as "Father Happy Hands." No investigation followed and nothing went to law enforcement. The vicar for priests met with him, Holihan called himself a "hugger," and nine months later the matter was closed. Illinois Attorney General, Holihan narrative.

June and July 1990

After a police presentation at the parish school, six more boys came forward and the principal went to DCFS, which completed its investigation in June 1990 and "confirmed that credible evidence supported the sexual abuse allegations against Holihan." The state's attorney opted not to indict. Holihan resigned the pastorate in July 1990, and the Archdiocese's attorney thanked the prosecutor's office for its cooperation "in its efforts to minimize the negative impact." Illinois Attorney General, Holihan narrative.

2005 to September 2008

Cardinal Francis George removed Holihan's faculties in 2005 and put him under "a strict monitoring protocol." His decree said the accusations were "so numerous" and the descriptions "so clear that there can be no doubt that Father Holihan is guilty." In the years between, the report says, Holihan had worked part-time as an associate pastor at St. Jerome in Rogers Park. In September 2008 the Cardinal ordered him to a treatment center in Missouri; Holihan asked to be laicized instead and moved back to the cottage. Illinois Attorney General, Holihan narrative.

January 21, 2014

The Archdiocese released Holihan's personnel file under a settlement agreement, one of 30 priests' files that day. The Sun-Times reported what was in it: a parent's 1986 letter to Cardinal Bernardin, "Please get him some help, or get him away from children"; DCFS finding credible evidence in 12 cases in 1990; a transfer to nursing-home ministry; an August 2008 admission of "intimate relationships" with minors. He was among 14 priests named in the Archdiocese's 2005 settlements. Chicago Sun-Times, via BishopAccountability.org.

May 23, 2023

The Illinois Attorney General's Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse in Illinois listed Daniel Mark Holihan, ordained 1957, among the 275 clerics and religious brothers with substantiated allegations in the Archdiocese of Chicago: 40 reported survivors, first report 1986, limited ministry 1990, removed from public ministry 2002, laicized 2010, died 2016. The dates of reported abuse run from the 1960s to 2007, in Chicago and at Wonder Lake. Eight Chicago parishes are in his assignment history. Illinois Attorney General, report entry.

May 8, 2024

Fox 32 had this one. The Archdiocese settled, for an amount nobody disclosed, with a man of 60 who says Holihan abused him at Our Lady of the Snows in 1979 and 1980, when Holihan still had another ten years as pastor there ahead of him. Fox 32 Chicago.

February 10, 2025

The Archdiocese's own list, titled Clergy with Allegations of Sexual Abuse of a Minor Substantiated by the Archdiocese, gives Holihan one row, and as it reads today the row goes: limited ministry with restrictions and monitoring, June 1990. Removed from public ministry, June 2002. Resigned, November 2008. Laicized, July 2010. Deceased, October 2016. And the list says of itself that a substantiated finding "represents the opinion of the Archdiocese, and is not a legal judgment or determination." Archdiocese of Chicago list (PDF).

November 24, 2025

Still open, this one. A man who was at Quigley Preparatory Seminary in the early 1980s sued the Archdiocese of Chicago, and what his complaint says (a complaint, remember, not a finding) is that Holihan groomed him at Quigley, took him up to the cottage at Wonder Lake and to the rectory at Our Lady of the Snows, and abused him there. It also says the chancery already knew. More than 20 people had reported sexual misconduct by Holihan by then, it alleges, the earliest in the 1960s, and each time he got a new assignment instead of the door. The Archdiocese wouldn't comment. CBS Chicago.

We checked this on September 11, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from November 24, 2025. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who answers for what Father Holihan is accused of

The Archdiocese of Chicago, which assigned him, took the reports, and decided what to do with them. That's the whole theory, and on this name you barely have to argue it, because the Attorney General already wrote it down: the Archdiocese "knew what Holihan was doing to children years before it removed him from the pastorate." Told in July 1986, and it closed the file. Told again in 1990, with a DCFS finding in hand, and it let him resign, let him work part-time at St. Jerome, and waited until June 2002 to remove him. The November 2025 complaint reaches further back. It alleges the reports started in the 1960s, that more than 20 people eventually made them, and that the answer each time was a new assignment. A complaint is a complaint. But the Archdiocese's own file, released in 2014, is what it's built on.

The priest himself is beside the point. He was laicized in 2010 and died in 2016, and Illinois does not let a punitive claim follow a man into his grave, so these cases are pleaded against what the Archdiocese knew and did, not against a dead priest's estate. And the Archdiocese can answer. It has never filed for bankruptcy, there's no claims deadline, and it settles one case at a time. It settled a Holihan claim in May 2024, from Our Lady of the Snows in 1979 and 1980. By its own statement it has paid more than $400 million to survivors.

One thing to be clear about. Holihan was never convicted of anything; the state's attorney chose not to indict him in 1990. What exists instead is a DCFS finding, a cardinal's decree, a place on the Archdiocese's list, which the Archdiocese itself calls an opinion and not a legal judgment, and an entry in the Attorney General's report. Each is exactly what it is and nothing more. We don't dress it up, and a lawyer won't either.

Your deadline: the Illinois statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse

For a lot of the kids from Holihan's later years, there is no deadline. None, literally. The reported conduct on this name runs to 2007, and if you were a boy around him in the 1990s or the 2000s, the clock that used to run on you was thrown out on January 1, 2014 and hasn't come back.

The exception is claims that had already run out before the law changed, because Illinois won't bring a dead claim back to life. Roughly: born in 1983 or later means your claim was still alive in 2014, and you can file on age alone. Born earlier, which is most of the Our Lady of the Snows kids and all of his earlier parishes, and it depends on two things. When you first understood the harm, and what the Archdiocese said, or hid, along the way. Illinois keeps that second path open when the institution kept quiet, and here there's plenty to point at. A 1986 file, closed. A 1990 letter thanking prosecutors. A personnel file nobody outside the chancery saw until January 2014. And for what it's worth, the man who sued in November 2025 was at Quigley in the early 1980s, so he's in that older group too.

Which comes down to this. Born after 1982, there's probably no clock on you at all; Illinois took it off on January 1, 2014, in 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2, and the courts have kept it off. Born before, there may well still be a way in. Either way it's a conversation, twenty minutes on the phone, not something you work out from a web page.

Your situation still qualifies even if

It wasn't Holihan himself. Another priest at the parish, a teacher, a coach; the case is against the Archdiocese either way.
You have never said it out loud to anyone. Most of the 40 hadn't, for decades.
It happened at the cottage, or on a trip, not at the parish. The record describes exactly that.
A lawyer told you, years back, that it was too late. Illinois changed that law in 2014, so ask again.
You live somewhere else now. Most people from those years do.

Where he was

The cottage at Wonder Lake, first, because it's in the record from the 1960s on and it wasn't a parish. Quigley Preparatory Seminary, where he was never assigned, but the November 2025 complaint says that's where it began. Then the parishes, and Our Lady of the Snows most of all, 4810 South Leamington in Garfield Ridge, his for eleven years from 1979 to 1990. He'd had five before it, 1957 to 1979, in this order: St. Patrick on Adams Street, St. Aloysius, St. Sylvester, St. Francis de Sales, St. Jane de Chantal. (The Attorney General's entry, linked above, has the years for each.) After 1990? A year at St. Therese of the Infant Jesus. Then St. Jerome in Rogers Park, and Catholic Charities from 1992 to 2002, though he kept turning up at St. Jerome part-time for years. Somewhere else? Tell us anyway.

Questions people are asking

Who was Father Daniel Holihan?

A Chicago priest. Ordained 1957, and pastor of Our Lady of the Snows in Garfield Ridge from 1979 until July 1990, when he resigned, a month after DCFS found credible evidence against him. Five other Chicago parishes before that, St. Therese and St. Jerome after. The Archdiocese didn't remove him from public ministry until June 2002, four years before it put him on its list in March 2006 and eight before he was laicized in July 2010; he died in October 2016, with 40 people having reported him by the Attorney General's count.

Was Holihan ever charged with anything, or convicted?

No, neither. The closest it came was June 1990, when DCFS found credible evidence and the state's attorney looked at it and opted not to indict. Nothing was ever filed after that. So what's left is a DCFS finding, a cardinal's decree from 2005, a row on the Archdiocese's list (which, by its own wording, is an opinion), and the Attorney General's 2023 entry. Not one of those is a conviction. This page doesn't call them one, and won't.

Can I still sue if Father Holihan is dead?

Yes, because the case was never really about him. It's against the Archdiocese of Chicago, which assigned him and was told about him. It settled one Holihan claim in May 2024. In November 2025, nine years after he died, a former Quigley student sued it over him. Both of those happened with him long gone.

Does Illinois still have a statute of limitations on this?

For most people, not anymore. It went away on January 1, 2014. If your claim was still alive that day, then no, there's no deadline on it now. The catch is claims that had already lapsed under the older rules. Those need discovery or concealment facts to get back in, which is the whole reason we ask whether you were born in 1983 or later.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Nothing, here. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

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ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed Illinois attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.