GUAM
Pacific Daily News
[with video]
Haidee V Eugenio, Pacific Daily News July 27, 2016
A Vatican-appointed archbishop currently overseeing the local Catholic Church said Wednesday he recants and retracts statements made by Archbishop Anthony Apuron that were aimed at those who accused Apuron of sexual misconduct.
Apuron, the local church leader who currently isn’t in charge of daily operations, had called those accusations malicious and calumnious.
“The archdiocese should always assume and believe that the intent of those who make allegations of sexual abuse is to bring to light serious claims of abuse,” Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai said in his first press conference since Pope Francis appointed him in June to temporarily oversee the Catholic Church in Guam.
Hon’s recanting and retraction of Apuron’s statements came days after Hon’s name was included as a defendant in a libel and slander lawsuit filed by three former altar boys and the mother of a fourth altar boy who accused Apuron of sexually assaulting them in the late 1970s in Agat.
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