VATICAN CITY
Crux
By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent September 25, 2014
ROME — Pope Francis has fired a bishop in Paraguay who sheltered a priest accused of sexual abuse of minors in the United States, though to what extent the abuse charges figured in the bishop’s ouster isn’t yet clear.
The Vatican announced Wednesday that Pope Francis has removed Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano as the bishop of the small diocese of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, citing “serious pastoral reasons” and “the greater good of preserving the unity of the local church.”
Livieres Plano is associated with the abuse scandals because of his decision to welcome Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, a fellow Argentine, into his diocese in 2003 after he left the Scranton, Pennsylvania diocese facing abuse charges.
A statement on the Scranton diocese’s web site earlier this year identified Urrutigoity as a “serious threat to young people,” yet Livieres Plano, who maintains Urrutigoity’s innocence, made him vicar general of the diocese in Paraguay, in effect his second-in-command.
Urrutigoity was named in a highly publicized abuse lawsuit in Scranton in 2002. At the time, he and another priest, Eric Ensey, were suspended by then-Bishop James Timlin amid allegations they had sexually molested students at a local Catholic school. The diocese reportedly reached a $450,000 settlement in the case in 2006.
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