LOS ANGELES (CA)
Vatican Insider
[What Archbishop Gomez said.]
[What Cardinal Mahony said.]
After his shocking removal, Cardinal Roger Mahony accuses his successor, Jose Gomez, and asks “Why now?”
Alessandro Speciale
Vatican City
A day after he was controversially stripped of all public duties, the former Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, has responded to his successor Mgr. José H. Gomez, who decided on the cardinal’s removal last Thursday, in light of the umpteenth case of child molestation in the U.S. Catholic Church.
Gomez’s decision to remove Mahony, who was Archbishop of Los Angeles between 1985 and 2011, has very few precedents in as far as cardinals’ dismissals go. One case that comes to mind is that of the Cardinal of Vienna, Hermann Groer who was accused of child molestation. The Opus Dei prelate has ordered for the cardinal to be stripped of all public duties following the release of confidential church files, containing documents that show how Mahony and other leaders of the nation’s largest Catholic diocese tried to protect as many as 124 priests accused of molesting children, over a long period of time.
Gomez’s move was accompanied by a letter to faithful, in which he admits: “I find these files to be brutal and painful reading.” “The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.”
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