BUFFALO (NY)
National Catholic Reporter
October 25, 2018
by Peter Feuerherd
The chill descending over the Diocese of Buffalo, New York, this fall is not just the cold winds blowing off Lake Erie.
In this year of tumult for the church, from a damning Pennsylvania grand jury report to a cardinal called out for sexual harassment and abuse of a minor, perhaps no other region in the country is feeling the fallout more than the 721,000 Catholics of the Buffalo Diocese.
Catholics in the diocese were assuaged when their church seemed to weather previous storms, such as the 2002 Boston exposure, relatively unscathed. However, local investigative reporters discovered over the summer a series of sex abuse cases covered up by bishops. The result has been a call for the resignation of the current bishop, Richard Malone, who came to Buffalo from Boston in 2012. The publicity has also tarnished the tenures of Bishops Edward Head, Henry Mansell, and Edward Urban Kmiec, all of whom are now accused of covering up for sex abuse among diocesan clergy dating from the 1970s.
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