Hon's Disregard for Justice Is Odd

By Tim Rohr
Pacific Daily News
July 27, 2016

http://www.guampdn.com/story/opinion/readers/2016/07/27/opinion-hons-disregard-justice-odd/87518020/

In this file photo, Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai presides over Mass at the Dulce Nombre De Maria Cathedral Basilica in Hagatna on June 12.

On June 6, Pope Francis removed the authority of Archbishop (Anthony) Apuron to administer the Archdiocese of Agana and named Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai temporary administrator.

Why did Pope Francis do this?

For the last three years, Pope Francis and the Vatican authorities who oversee our region have received a steady stream of documentation about the mounting problems in the Archdiocese of Agana:

•the illicit removal of and the public mistreatment of Fr. Paul Gofigan and Msgr. James Benavente,

•the canonically (and possibly civil) illegal alienation of the mega-million dollar Yona property,

•the misleading of Guam’s Catholics about the true nature of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary,

•the gross lack of formation evident in the priests ordained from that institution,

•the revelation that Apuron had been hiding a priest in our diocese for over a decade who had been twice credibly accused of child molestation and banned from the diocese where the molestation allegedly occurred,

•the arrest of Fr. Luis Camacho and the later discovery that he had been secretly scuttled off to a diocese in the Middle East, and even

•the May 17 allegation of sexual abuse against Apuron by Roy Quintanilla.

However, none of the above had yet caused the pope to act. On May 31, that changed

On that date, Apuron’s office released a media statement accusing Doris Yamashita Concepcion of spreading “malicious and calumnious accusation(s)” against Apuron, and threatened “canonical and legal measures” against her and others. Concepcion’s “crime” was her retelling of what transpired during the last minutes of her son’s life:

Moments before disappearing into an operating room where he died eleven years ago, Concepcion’s son, Joseph (Sonny) Quinata, told his mother that “Father Apuron” had molested him when he was an altar boy in Agat.

From the full account, it appeared that Sonny’s need to unburden himself at this moment was not just motivated by a wound he had carried all his life, but because Apuron had called him “the devil’s son.” And, facing death and eternity, Sonny reached out to his mother for reassurance that Apuron’s condemnation was not true.

For daring to publicly share this story, the now-Archbishop Apuron, through his agents, publicly labeled Concepcion a liar and threatened to sue her.

Apuron was within his rights to deny the allegations and maintain his innocence. He was not within his rights to publicly malign her, and doing so not only gave the pope the “grave reason” he needed to take action against Apuron, it also provided the opportunity for the defamation suit now taken up by attorney David Lujan.

Meanwhile, Hon has not retracted, rescinded, apologized for, repudiated, disavowed nor canceled the accusations and threats made against Concepcion by his — emphasis on “his” — office. (And sadly, other than Deacon Steve Martinez, no member of the clergy has publicly done so either.)

Hon’s complete disregard for justice in this matter is odd given that the public mistreatment of Concepcion by Apuron is the aforementioned “grave reason” which caused Francis to send Hon here in the first place with orders from Francis himself to take “urgent measures.”

But a possible rebuke from Francis may be the least of Hon’s worries. Not only has Hon’s apathy now made him an implicit party to Apuron’s defamation of Concepcion and possibly a target of the suit himself, the public backlash to his “ice cold” attitude about all this has been the primary driver of public support for the pending legislation which proposes to permanently lift the statute of limitations relative to sex crimes against minors and the push to include institutional liability. In short, Hon has put the entire Archdiocese of Agana at risk.

Hon knows this and apparently does not care. He lectures us about how things have to happen in “God’s time” (meaning “his”), and tells us to pray for peace while a 70-year-old mother of a now dead child weeps outside his cathedral.

If there ever was a metaphor for the decades-long disdain shown by the Catholic hierarchy for victims of clerical sex abuse, Apuron’s public mistreatment of Concepcion and Hon’s abusive silence are it.