GUAM
Pacific Daily News
Written by
Gregory D. Perez
In the latest incident involving a sexual abuse scandal to hit the Catholic Church in Guam, there seems to be a lack of transparency with the leadership of the Church in accepting its responsibility and role in the incident. Once again, our confidence and trust is being shaken and tested.
Archbishop Apuron is the head of the Catholic Church in Guam. It is under his watch that all these problems are cropping up. It is his responsibility to show leadership and “clean up his house” of all these problems — from the lack of financial transparency to its handling of clergy sex abuse. And in this latter case, a mishandling of it could be financially disastrous to our archdiocese.
In the United States alone, billions of dollars in claims have been paid out over the past 50 years in Boston, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, New Orleans, New York and elsewhere because of their denying, running, hiding, lying, concealing, manipulating, deceiving and pretending that all is well and not to worry. Should we wait until lawsuits are brought against the Archdiocese of Agana before any action is taken to clean house?
In the case of Fr. Luis Camacho, we see absence of proper training by the Redemptoris Mater Seminary, or RMS, of its young men to be ordained as priests and sent out into parishes as pastors. We seriously ask: Are the seminary’s “formators” screening these seminarians for the difficult task of being pastors in our parishes — before they are ordained as priests?
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