CALIFORNIA
U-T San Diego
Written by
Matthew T. Hall
When the Most Rev. Cirilo Flores becomes the fifth bishop in the history of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego next year, he will reach a height he couldn’t imagine while growing up in a Corona barrio.
His parents were faithful but poor. He attended public schools until the Knights of Columbus began paying for a Catholic education in seventh grade. He was gifted but unsure of himself. He wrote in his yearbook that he would become a teacher, an attorney or a priest.
In one show of his significant potential, he would become all three. …
Cirilo Flores has been on several church boards since. As auxiliary bishop of Orange, he was part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ subcommittees on Latin America and Hispanic Affairs. He also served multiple terms on his diocese’s priest personnel board between 1995 and 2009, a period that included the past decade’s national priest sexual-abuse scandal.
Citing that service, Joelle Casteix, southwestern regional director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, criticized Flores’ advancement in church leadership three years ago. She reiteraterd her concerns this week.
“He served on the board during some of its most controversial times when they had numerous perpetrators in ministry and only kicked them out because the U.S. Congress of Catholic Bishops said you have to do so,” Casteix said. “Since he’s become a bishop, he’s been virtually silent on victims’ rights. There’s a million things he could have done.”
Flores said Friday his board handled clergy placement in parishes and a separate board handled misconduct and the sexual-abuse cases within the church. “I don’t know what she wants me to do. When Bishop Tod (Brown) settled the cases several years ago, he apologized maybe 100 times and so did the bishops in Orange and the priests.”
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