LOS ANGELES (CA)
Press TV (Iran)
Recently released documents in Los Angeles suggest Vatican bureaucracy hampered bishops trying to deal with allegations of abusive priests.
The documents show Cardinal Roger Mahony’s frustration as he tried to ensure one priest, the Rev. Kevin Barmasse, did not return to pastoral work.
Barmasse, who allegedly abused at least eight teenage boys after plying them with alcohol, appealed to Rome.
“Given the pastoral situation in the United States today, which is all too well known, bishops need to be able to act quickly and decisively in cases of alleged clerical misconduct to assure the People of God that their rights are being fully protected,” Mahony wrote in a 1994 letter to a Vatican official the cardinal had met with during a visit to Rome four months earlier.
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