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	Church Payout Puts Cloud over L.A.'s Cardinal With Litigation Over, Roger Mahony's Controversial Decisions Will Be Widely Debated By Tony Castro Daily Breeze July 17, 2007 http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/regstate/articles/8546192.html With the historic $660 million settlement Monday ending the clergy sexual-abuse scandal against the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese, attention turned to the future of the central figure in the case - a man who never molested children and wasn't charged with a crime. But Cardinal Roger Mahony may forever be linked to the scandal, which he tried to cover up by first transferring known molesters from parish to parish then fighting prosecutors - all the way to the Supreme Court - to keep church records of the abuse a secret. For several years, Los Angeles businessman Armando Soto Mayor has kept a watchful eye over the church's pedophile-priest revelations for deep personal reasons. He was an altar boy and considered becoming a priest. Now, the man whose family has been part of the Catholic Church for centuries refuses to have his 1-year-old son baptized. "A person who abuses a child is sick," he said. "However, the man who covers it up is a criminal. … That's why I believe that Cardinal Mahony is the worst thing that could have happened to the Catholic Church. "Cardinal Mahony's legacy? He has no legacy." With litigation over, Mahony's legacy is now up for debate in ongoing assessments of his administration as the fourth archbishop of Los Angeles - a period of record growth in the country's largest archdiocese. With the scandal now a stain on his record, should he resign? "Absolutely, he should - there are 660 million reasons he should be resigning," said Steven Sanchez of Glendale, one of the 508 molestation and abuse victims. Similar sentiments were echoed among victims and their families outside Los Angeles Superior Court after a hearing formalizing the archdiocese's settlement, the largest of its kind in the country. Ray Boucher, a lawyer for most of the plaintiffs, said the painful ordeal and the staggering settlement have had a lasting effect on the cardinal and the church. The attorney for the archdiocese, Michael Hennigan, offered a similar assessment. "These cases have forever reformed the Archdiocese of Los Angeles," he said. "It will never be the same." For his part, Mahony appears to be hoping his apology issued at a Sunday news conference serves as enough of a mea culpa, saying the long legal battle had forced him to "reach the bottom." "I didn't know what to do next," he said. "Everything I did, someone thought was wrong. When you're empty, the only way up is God." Mahony's office didn't respond to a request for an interview for this story. But in a 2005 interview with the Catholic newspaper The Tidings, he said: "I don't believe in legacies at all. I don't see anything in the gospels that speaks about legacies, except everlasting life." Contact: tony.castro@dailynews.com
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