LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Post (Canada)
Kelly McParland | Feb 4, 2013
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony isn’t about to slip quietly into his enforced retirement from the archdiocese of Los Angeles, the biggest in the U.S. Within a day of the announcement that he had been censured by his successor, Mahony posted a letter on his personal blog, protesting his treatment.
Mahony was relieved of all his public duties on Thursday by the man who replaced him, Archbishop Jose Gomez, over his handling of decades of complaints about sexual abuse among priests. The firing, according to the Los Angeles Times, was “unprecedented in the American Catholic Church.”
Gomez, who’d been reading through thousands of pages of files on cases dating back 30 years, lamented the files as “brutal and painful reading. The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” he said, adding:
“I cannot undo the failings of the past that we find in these pages. Reading these files, reflecting on the wounds that were caused has been the saddest experience I’ve had since becoming your Archbishop in 2011.”
That struck a nerve with Mahony, who pointed out that Gomez had had plenty of opportunity to pipe up over the years, but had held his tongue. Acknowledging he’d made mistakes, “especially in the mid-1980s,” Mahony insisted nevertheless that “when I retired as the active Archbishop, I handed over to you an Archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth.”
That may be true, though, given the predilection the Roman Catholic Church has for covering its tracks, it’s impossible to be certain. In any case, it’s not 2012 or 2013 that’s the issue, but the three decades from the 1980s when dozens on dozens of complaints were filed to Church leaders over assaults by priests, to little result.
Not that there wasn’t a reaction. According to the personal files of 124 priests accused of abuse, released by the archdiocese on Thursday when a court finally put an end to church efforts to keep them from public view, the complaints produced lots of activity. Unfortunately little of it had to do with trying to protect the victims. Instead, efforts were mainly aimed at protecting the accused, preventing the police from catching wind of the complaints, and finding ways to spirit the priests to other states or countries so they wouldn’t have to face criminal responsibility for what they’d done.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.