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Grant Gallicho September 29, 2014
“Vatican Says Bishop’s Dismissal Not the Result of Sexual Abuse,” read a Catholic News Service headline published Saturday. The story, written by Francis X. Rocca, tut-tuts those who interpreted the firing of Bishop Livieres of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, as a sign of a Vatican crackdown on sexual abuse. The diocese was investigated by the Vatican in July after local Catholics, including the archbishop of Asuncion, Paraguay, Pastor Cuquejo–the metropolitan bishop–reportedly complained to Rome about several aspects of Livieres’s leadership. Among his concerns was Livieres’s decision to accept and promote a priest, Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, who had been accused of sexual misconduct by several people dating back to the late 1980s. Rocca’s story suggests that Urrutigoity had little to do with Pope Francis’s decision to replace Livieres.
Coming two days after the Vatican’s arrest of former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, pending a criminal trial on charges of paying for sex with boys during his time as nuncio to the Dominican Republic, the dismissal of Bishop Livieres appeared to be the latest step in a Vatican crackdown on sex abuse. But the Vatican says sex abuse was not a significant factor in Bishop Livieres’s dismissal.
Here’s what Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, SJ, told Rocca: “Let’s not confuse Wesolowski and Livieres; one is a case of pedophilia, the other is not.” Lombardi continued: “Livieres was not removed for reasons of pedophilia. That was not the principal problem.” What was? “There were serious problems with his management of the diocese, the education of clergy, and relations with other bishops,” Lombardi said.”
That sounds a bit like what Lombardi said to the New York Times last week: “The important problem was the relations within the episcopacy and in the local church, which were very difficult.” He explained that the accusations against Urrutigoity were “not central, albeit have been debated.”
For his part, Livieres, a member of Opus Dei, maintains that he was the victim of a smear campaign orchestrated by nefarious practitioners of liberation theology, presumably not those who were recently invited to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith–or were they? Considering this explanation comes from a man who on more than one occasion publicly called his metropolitan gay, it may not be totally reliable.
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