MILWAUKEE (WI)
Chicago Tribune
Brendan O’Brien and Geoffrey Davidian
Reuters
10:28 p.m. CDT, July 1, 2013
MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Roman Catholic Church officials in Milwaukee vigorously shielded pedophile priests and protected church funds from lawsuits during a decades-long sex abuse scandal, according to hundreds of documents released on Monday.
The documents include letters and deposition testimony from Cardinal and Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan who, during his time as archbishop of Milwaukee from 2002 to 2009, appealed to Vatican on numerous occasions to help address the ongoing fallout from the scandal.
The 6,000 pages of documents related to eight decades of abuse cases showed in great detail the Milwaukee archdiocese regularly reassigned priests who were accused of sexual molestation to new parishes and Dolan himself asking the Vatican permission to transfer $57 million to a trust fund to protect it against court action.
In 2011, the Milwaukee archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing the financial drain of settling sexual-abuse claims and acknowledging missteps by the church in dealing with pedophile priests.
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