GUAM
Pacific Daily News
Haidee V Eugenio, heugenio@guampdn.com June 4, 2017
The Vatican has all the evidence to defrock Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron, according to Catholics who continued their weekly picket on Sunday, nearly a year since Pope Francis suspended Apuron on June 6, 2016 over multiple allegations of rape and sex abuse of minors.
“Now that all evidence is in Rome, we want to see Apuron defrocked so that we can have healing in the church and healing also for victims of Apuron and other priests,” Laity Forward Movement President Lou Klitzkie said as she held a sign in front of Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica in Hagatna that read, “Apuron Out.”
The Archdiocese of Agana is not only dealing with Apuron’s canonical trial, but is also a defendant in 74 clergy sex abuse lawsuits and three other childhood sexual abuse complaints filed thus far in local and federal courts.
The first picket calling for Apuron’s removal as Guam archbishop and laicization was held on June 12 last year, Klitzkie said. Apuron, who is turning 72 on Nov. 1, has been Guam archbishop since May 1986.
“Everyone’s saying a decision will be out by June, I don’t know for sure but I hope it’s going to be soon. The Vatican has more than enough evidence,” said Doris Concepcion, mother of a now deceased former altar boy who was allegedly raped by Apuron more than once at a church rectory in the 1970s.
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