Fitzgerald: Bishop steered with faith, diligence

By Michael Fitzgerald
Record
September 17, 2016

http://www.recordnet.com/article/20160917/NEWS/160919753

I met Bishop Stephen E. Blaire shortly after he took over the Diocese of Stockton in 1999. Some charismatics on Montauban Court proclaimed their St. Mary statues were weeping.

And performing miracles. These mystics already had artist renderings of a Lourdes-like shrine that would draw the faithful hordes. Please exit through the gift shop, etc.

Blaire took charge. “This has nothing to do with miracles,” he said. Miracles are not literal Red Sea partings, Blaire said, but “the healing power of God in one’s life.”

Blaire has announced his retirement. A Roman Catholic bishop’s retirement process may take a year or more. But his exit is on the horizon. ...

“People don’t believe this,” Blaire said. “But I had no idea of the extent of the abuse in the church. I didn’t know. I was a bishop, and I didn’t know.”

Though he’s too diplomatic to say it — but I’ll say it — his predecessor, Bishop Donald Montrose, was a company man whose morally flaccid cover-ups of molester priests ensured perpetual litigation. And, ultimately, the diocese’s financial ruin.

The diocese paid out tens of millions to a seemingly endless procession of victims of a black hole with a white collar named Father Oliver O’Grady.

“I thought, ‘OK, we’re beyond this,’ ” Blaire recalled. “But we were never beyond it.”

His first day on the job, Blaire was gob-smacked with a $30 million judgment for abuse victims. He had to find, or borrow, the money.

He had to clean up a huge and fetid mess.

Blaire laid down new rules. Zero tolerance for priests and other religious workers who commit sexual abuse. Report alleged abuse to police. Transparency. Victims come first.

“This was the hardest thing,” Blaire said. “When you sit down and listen to one who is a victim — or survivor, they’re called survivors now — it breaks your heart. I cannot tell you how many times I cried, listening to some of those horror survivors. So that takes an emotional toll on one.”

Yet old victims, and new scandals, kept surfacing.

Finally, in 2014, the diocese crashed into bankruptcy. Blaire hopes it will emerge by the end of this year. The loss of moral authority will take longer to repair.