NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal
By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
Gallup Bishop Donald Pelotte drew a standing-room-only crowd in 2005 when he traveled to Winslow, Ariz., to apologize to the victims of sexual abuse by priests who pastored the town’s two Catholic parishes.
Clerical sex abuse, Pelotte told a packed St. Joseph’s Church, had caused human devastation comparable to Hurricane Katrina. Pelotte singled out two former Winslow priests, Clement Hageman and James Burns, whom he called among the “most abusive priests in the diocese,” according to news reports.
Even as Pelotte, who has since died, made his apology in Winslow, the diocese was quietly signing legal settlements with people who alleged that, as children, they were sexually abused by priests.
At the time of Pelotte’s apology, Burns was serving an 18-month prison sentence stemming from a 2004 Arizona conviction for sexually abusing a Winslow boy younger than 15 in the 1980s. Burns died in 2010.
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