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Advocates for clergy sex abuse victims challenge Fall River's new bishop
By Brian Fraga
I've heard that five buses full of friends and supporters of Fall River's new Catholic bishop, Edgar M. da Cunha, will travel Wednesday to Fall River from da Cunha's former diocese in Newark, N.J. to be on-hand for his installation Mass at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption. The cathedral is expected to be packed for the 2 p.m. Mass, which will be televised on two national Catholic cable networks. But not everyone around the cathedral is going to be celebrating for the new bishop. Members of Road to Recovery, Inc., - a New Jersey-based nonprofit that advocates for victims of clergy sex abuse - will be distributing leaflets and demonstrating for what they say was da Cunah's inaction regarding allegations of sexual abuse against a former priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, who is now reportedly in the Philippines. According to a press release distributed Tuesday night, Road to Recovery "will demand that Pope Francis rescind the appointment of Bishop Edgar da Cunha as Bishop of Fall River, MA and fire him from ministry as a bishop and priest." Meanwhile, David Clohessy, the executive director of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priest (SNAP), a national clergy abuse victims advocacy organization, released a statement this week saying that his group is "highly skeptical" about how da Cunha will protect the vulnerable and heal the wounded. Clohessy noted that Da Cunha arrives from an archdiocese with 42 publicly identified predator-priests and "a long, shameful history of protecting child molesting clerics over innocent, vulnerable children." Clohessy also alleged that da Cunha - the former auxiliary bishop in Newark - announced a new policy last year that enabled Newark Catholic officials to take secretive steps to reduce public attention on predator priests. "As best we can tell, da Cunha has shown no real courage or compassion in one of the worst archdioceses in the US for clergy sex abuse victims," Clohessy said. "We see no evidence that he has ever said or done a single thing to break with the self-serving and irresponsible actions of his Newark colleagues, who continue to put kids in harm's way and maintain secrecy at all costs." Da Cunha addressed some of those criticisms in a recent interview with the Herald News. He said the criticisms were unfair because as an auxiliary bishop, he was not in charge of setting policy and speaking out in the same manner as an archbishop. "As a bishop now of the diocese, if there is any situation that I need to address, I will address it seriously and responsibly, following the laws and the recommendations of the bishops conference,” da Cunha said. “I have no interest in protecting or defending anyone who may abuse children. That is not my style.” While saying he was skeptical, Clohessy said it was his hope "that Fall River's new bishop will step out of the unhealthy mold of his colleagues and take even one proactive, practical step toward protecting one child, exposing one predator, or punishing one enabler."
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