LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Catholic Reporter
by Jerry Filteau | Feb. 1, 2013
In an action possibly without any precedent in church history, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez has barred his predecessor, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, from any public ministry in Los Angeles.
“Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties” Gomez said in a Jan 31 letter.
He cited Mahony’s alleged failures to protect young people from sexually abusive priests – extensively documented in court filings in recent years – as grounds for the extraordinary decision, in church terms, to bar the cardinal from any future public activities in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.
Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011 and a cardinal since 1991, has long been one of the leading church figures in the United States, a leader in justice for farmworkers, immigrants and other victims of economic injustice.
Church law gives cardinals extraordinary authority even beyond their own dioceses, with Canon 357 of the Code of Canon Law saying that “in those matters which pertain to their own person, cardinals living outside of Rome and outside their own diocese are exempt from the power of governance of the bishop of the diocese in which they are residing.”
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