Cletus F. O'Donnell

Cletus Francis O'Donnell (August 22, 1917 – August 31, 1992) was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as the second bishop of the Diocese of Madison in Wisconsin from 1967 to 1992. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago in Illinois from 1960 to 1967.

Biography

Early life Cletus O'Donnell was born on August 22, 1917, in Waukon, Iowa, to Patrick and Isabel (Duffy) O’Donnell. His father was a banker and his mother was a teacher. The family moved to Chicago in 1927. In 1935, O’Donnell graduated from Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago in 1935. A retreat at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois, was a motivator for O'Donnell to join the priesthood. In 1941, he received a master's degree from St. Mary.

Priesthood O'Donnell was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Samuel Stritch on May 3, 1941, for the Archdiocese of Chicago. As bishop, he founded the diocesan Apostolate to the Handicapped on October 31, 1967. O'Donnell also established ministries for the deaf and the developmentally disabled. He also encouraged adult education and created a religious education consultants program to help individual parishes.

O’Donnell suffered a stroke on September 13, 1990, and then a second one in the spring of 1992 which led him to resign. Cletus O'Donnell died of a heart attack on August 31, 1992, in Madison.

In February 1995, several men sued the Diocese of Madison for failing to protect them as minors from acts of sexual abuse by Reverend Michael Trainor, a priest in the diocese, during the 1970s and 1980s. The plaintiffs claimed that O'Donnell was aware of Trainor's abuse of children and transferred him from one parish to another without reporting him to the police or to the parishioners.