UNITED STATES
Irish Examiner
Saturday, February 23, 2013
The American cardinal who was accused of turning a blind eye to the crimes of Irish paedophile priest Oliver O’Grady will today be questioned about a Mexican priest believed to have molested 26 children.
By Stephen Rogers and Nicole Winfield
Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former Archbishop of Los Angeles, hit the headlines here when it was claimed he transferred O’Grady from diocese to diocese to mask his abuse of children.
O’Grady would eventually serve seven years in a US prison before returning to Ireland. He was sentenced to three years in prison last year when he was caught with a large haul of child pornography.
Now Cardinal Mahony is in the headlines once more. Last month, a Los Angeles court ordered hundreds of files detailing the activities of priests accused of sex abuse. The files show the cardinal and other top archdiocese officials manoeuvred behind the scenes to shield accused priests and protect the Church from a growing scandal while keeping parishioners in the dark.
Today, as part of a clerical abuse case, he will be questioned under oath about a Mexican priest, Rev Nicolas Aguilar Rivera, who visited his diocese in the late 1980s. He will be asked how he managed the Mexican priest during a nine-month stay during which the alleged abuse of 26 children took place. The Mexican priest, now defrocked, is still on the run.
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