LOS ANGELES (CA)
Whispers in the Loggia
Indeed, it is a stunner.
Ten days after an initial release from 30,000 pages of clergy sex-abuse files in the archdiocese of Los Angeles sparked widespread scorn and calls for the prosecution of now-retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and his then-vicar for clergy, now Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry, in a letter to the 5 million-member church released tonight, Archbishop José Gomez announced that the embattled auxiliary would be relieved of his pastoral oversight of two of the LA church’s three counties, while the iconic Mahony – the longest-reigning American cardinal named after Vatican II, whose quarter-century tenure saw his hometown church become the largest diocese in the nation’s history – will, according to his successor, “no longer have any administrative or public duties.”
“The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil,” Gomez said. “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.
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.