LOS ANGELES (CA)
Myrtle Beach Online
By HECTOR BECERRA, ASHLEY POWERS AND VICTORIA KIM – Los Angeles Times
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — When he took office in 1985, Roger M. Mahony set about modernizing the operations of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. He brought in computers and put women in top jobs.
He then appointed an Irish-born academic to a brand-new cabinet position: Vicar for Clergy, a human resources director of sorts for priests, brothers and nuns. Msgr. Thomas J. Curry would shape the way the nation’s largest archdiocese responded to claims that its priests had molested and raped children.
In his five years in the role, Curry was a staunch defender of the church and its clergymen. And as revealed in secret church records made public this week, he chose again and again to conceal clerics’ crimes from police and put priests’ welfare ahead of helping victims.
On Thursday, as his former boss was publicly rebuked, the 70-year-old regional bishop in Santa Barbara stepped down, part of an unprecedented reaction by the Catholic Church to the clergy child abuse scandal. It was a stunning fall for a man who had acted as a right hand for one of the most powerful U.S. Catholic prelates.
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