GUAM
The Worthy Adversary
Fifteen Years After Dallas, A Seven-Part Series: Introduction
Fifteen Years After Dallas, Part One: The Altoona-Johnstown Grand Jury Report
Fifteen Years After Dallas, Part Two: Is There a Crook in the Diocese of Crookston?
Fifteen Years After Dallas, Part Three: A Priest Admits Abusing, Chicago Cardinal Does Nothing
Fifteen Years After Dallas, Part Four: Convicted Priest Deemed “Safe” by Oklahoma City Archbishop, Catholics Rightly Upset
Fifteen Years After Dallas, Part Five: Naughty Nienstedt and the Vatican Shred
Fifteen Years After Dallas, Part Six: A seminarian in Ohio attempts to buy babies. The Bishop? He pretends nothing happened
Fifteen Years After Dallas, Part Seven: Sister Cathy Turns Baltimore into a Troll
June 19, 2017
Joelle Casteix
This would have been Part Eight, except for one little loophole:
Guam/the Archdiocese of Agaña is NOT TECHNICALLY a member of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The Archdiocese of Agaña is a member of the Episcopal Conference of the Pacific (CE-PAC).
Guam’s disgraced Archbishop Anthony Apuron (pictured above with the pope) used to attend USCCB meetings and the like, but I think he used the “buffet” approach when it came to what window-dressing reforms he would adopt and what he wouldn’t.
Now that the Archdiocese of Agaña is headed by Archbishop Michael Byrnes out of Detroit, I think that the bonds to the USCCB are going to become much stronger.
Onto my story:
The saga of Archbishop Anthony Apuron is long and horrific.
Catholics began protesting his financial mismanagement and mobster tactics, including improper financial dealings with a Catholic sect called the Neo-Catechumenal Way.
Then, multiple alleged child victims—who risked their reputations, their families’ well-being, and their livelihoods by coming forward and saying that Apuron abused them—came forward. They all said that Apuron sexually abused them.
Apuron is now subject of a Vatican tribunal that will do little more than, I believe, give him a slap on the wrist and allow him to live in hiding on the mainland (with a monthly retirement check) for the rest of his life.
Last year, Guam lawmakers passed a civil window that allows child sex abuse victims to use the civil courts to get accountability. Other victims came forward and exposed a web of child sex abuse and cover-up going back decades. This is the same law that that victims in New York are protesting and begging to have.
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