GUAM
Pacific Daily News
Haidee V Eugenio, heugenio@guampdn.com
Former Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron may have been charged with solicitation in the confessional and child sexual assault as part of his secretive canonical trial, but his penalty seems to match that of being found guilty of solicitation, a canon law expert said.
“For civil legal reasons, I guess they backed off of child sexual abuse and proceeded on solicitation because it gets the same final result but also does not trigger civil liability back in the hundreds of cases in Guam,” said canon law expert Patrick Wall, a former Catholic priest and Benedictine monk who left the ministry in 1998.
Apuron is one of dozens of named defendants in more than 160 Guam clergy sex abuse cases filed against the Archdiocese of Agana.
A Vatican tribunal, comprised of five judges, on March 16 found Apuron guilty of certain accusations and removed him from the position of archbishop and from the local archdiocese
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