LOS ANGELES (CA)
Religion News Service
David Gibson | Feb 4, 2013
(RNS) The quake that hit Los Angeles last Thursday (Jan. 31) was an ecclesiastical one, but still pretty earth-shaking for the Catholic Church: After the release of thousands of secret personnel files detailing decades of sexual abuse of children by clergy, Archbishop Jose Gomez publicly rebuked his predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony, and stripped him of his official duties.
But here’s the question: Did anything really change for the embattled cardinal?
“The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” Gomez said in a statement, adding: “Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties.”
(Gomez also announced that Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry, a longtime aide to Mahony who was deeply involved in the cover-up, had resigned his position overseeing the Santa Barbara region.)
Much of the information in the files was known or suspected, but the archdiocese had waged a lengthy and contentious legal battle to keep ugly details of the cover-ups secret. The church lost, and the 12,000 pages of documents graphically demonstrated how Mahony, who headed the Los Angeles archdiocese from 1985 to 2011, sought to conceal the abuse from authorities.
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