UNITED STATES
Salon
February 9, 2010
Lucian K. Truscott IV
The Catholic Church is still only groping its way toward telling the truth about sexual abuse by priests
“Mary’s” real name was Francis Cardinal Spellman. The year was 1967, and he was Archbishop of the diocese of New York. An intimate of popes going back to Pope Pius XII, whom he had befriended when he was Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli in the 1920’s and serving as Papal Nuncio in the Vatican, Spellman was the most powerful Catholic figure in the United States, and one of the most powerful in the world.
The groping took place in his private quarters behind St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan in the presence of two West Point cadets and one Monsignor who was introduced to us as the Cardinal’s “personal assistant.”
I was a junior at West Point, and one of the editors of the cadet magazine, The Pointer. Cadets were allowed only two weekend leaves each semester in those days, and what they called a “weekend leave” consisted of being allowed to leave the campus on the Hudson from noon on Saturday until 6 p.m. on Sunday, so it wasn’t a “weekend” at all.
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