LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times
At Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral downtown, Msgr. Kevin Kostelnik asked parishioners Sunday “to pray fervently” for the victims of the clergy child abuse scandal and lamented that “these are tough days.”
Like other church leaders, Kostelnik read a Jan. 31 letter from Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez about tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel files posted on the church’s website last week of 122 priests accused of molesting children. Some of the files lay out in Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry’s own words how the church hierarchy plotted to keep law enforcement from learning that children had been molested at the hands of priests.
“The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” Gomez wrote in the letter. “There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children.”
After reading the letter, Kostelnik urged parishioners to continue to reflect on the archbishop’s words and to pray for the victims.
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