NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
[documents – BishopAccountability.org]
Posted by Mary Caplan on June 05, 2012
We’re outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. in New York City today for three reasons. First, to expose – again – deceit by Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Second, to urge Dolan – again – to stop attacking and deceiving and start answering and apologizing. And third, to urge other Catholic figures to prod Dolan to be forthcoming about every single payout and “special fund” he made to or set up for child molesting clerics.
This isn’t about admitted serial predator priests getting health care from Cardinal Dolan. It’s about Catholics and citizens getting openness and honesty from Cardinal Dolan. Dolan and other church officials admit they’ve followed through on their pledges to pedophile priests. They have broken, however, their often-repeated promises of “transparency” to the rest of us.
Two newly-disclosed internal church memos show that a secret $10,000 payment in 2005 from then-Milwaukee Archbishop Dolan to a pedophile priest was not for health insurance, as Dolan claimed. And in a little-noticed 2003 letter from Dolan to then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Dolan promised that he would “set up” a “special fund” for the admitted predator.
The new memos – disclosed yesterday by BishopAccountability.org – deal with Franklyn Becker, a priest who reportedly molested children in both Wisconsin and California and who admitted at least some of his crimes.
The two single-spaced typed documents show that
— a $10,000 payment to Becker was never once linked to health insurance,
— another Milwaukee church official was working to get him health insurance through Catholic Charities, and
— to avoid legal liability, the archdiocese would NOT pay for Becker’s health insurance.
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