VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider
February 11, 2018
By Salvatore Cernuzio
The February 7th audience with Pope Francis in the Vatican. The verdict of Cardinal Burke’s trial remains unpublished. The latest accusation from his nephew. The Church on the island is hit with an avalanche of lawsuits
Guam’s Archbishop Apuron breaks his silence: “I deny all allegations made against me”
“Holy Father, I wanted to see you before dying.” Arriving at the Paul VI Hall in a wheelchair due to health problems, Msgr. Anthony Apuron, the Archbishop of Guam suspended amid abuse accusations, greeted Pope Francis at the end of the general audience on February 7th. Bergoglio reacted with affection, shaking the bishop’s hand and privately giving him a few words of encouragement.
Apuron had recently undergone surgery, as he revealed in a statement released in the last few weeks breaking his silence concerning the accusations of sexual abuse against minors first made against him in June of 2016—accusations which forced him to suspend himself as archbishop of the Pacific island while a canonical trial was initiated.
“As I lay sick after another surgery and I face the final judgment approaching evermore close, having lost interest in this world” reads the statement, in which the prelate specifically responds to the latest accusation from his nephew Mark Apuron, who in an interview with a Guam news outlet described an alleged assault in the bathroom of his uncle’s house during a family dinner. The incident, according to the man, happened sometime around 1989 or 1990.
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