The  failings  of  a  cardinal  (part 1)

 

 

Cardinal Mahony was ordained a priest in 1962 and at age 38, he was named auxiliary bishop of Fresno in January 1975. Five years later, Mahony became bishop of Stockton, California and was named archbishop of Los Angeles in 1985 at age 48. He was later made a cardinal in 1991 at age 54.

 

After Cardinal Mahony was installed as archbishop in September 1985 of the diocese in Los Abgeles, there were 27 cases of alleged abuse that later came to light and by 1992, there were eight more cases of abuses discovered.  Since 2001, there has been only one new case of alleged abuse reported per year.

                    

On July 16, 2007, Cardinal Mahony and the Roman Catholic Church in Los Angeles apologized for the abuses by priests after 508 victims reached a record-breaking settlement worth $660 million, with an average of $1.3 million for each plaintiff. Mahony described the abuse as a terrible sin and crime, after a series of civil trials into sex abuses committed since the 1940s were to begin. The agreement settled all outstanding civil lawsuits against the Archdiocese.                            

 

Under the leadership of the cardinal in 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles quietly appropriated $115 million from its 11 cemeteries maintenance fund and used the funds to cover the $660-million abuse settlement with priest-molestation victims. The church did not inform relatives of the deceased that it had taken the money, which amounted to 88% of the fund, from the cemeteries maintenance fund.  The money was used from the fund in order to enable the archdiocese to protect the assets of the parishes’ schools and essential ministries. California law prohibits private cemeteries from touching the principal of their perpetual care funds and bars them from using the interest on those funds for anything other than maintenance. Those laws, however, do not apply to cemeteries run by religious organizations. Cardinal Mahony’s actions on clergy sexual abuse of minors in the years before, during and after the 1980s had been widely criticized for withholding information on abusive priests from police and other civil authorities. He also engaged in tough, combative legal fights to prevent disclosure of confidential archdiocesan records in hundreds of victims’ lawsuits.   

                                                                                             

Cardinal Mahony knew that Oliver O'Grady, a priest serving under him who was a native of the Republic of Ireland, had a two-decade history of sexually abusing and molesting children (including one infant) but the cardinal refused to keep him away from children. In 1984, a Stockton police investigation into sexual abuse allegations against O'Grady was reportedly closed after diocesan officials promised to remove the priest from any contact with children. Instead, Cardinal Mahony reassigned O'Grady to a parish approximately 50 miles east, in San Andreas, where O'Grady continued to molest and rape children in his parish. By 2012, local authorities had obtained internal Church documents showing that Cardinal Mahony had organized the movement of sexual predators across jurisdictional boundaries to complicate any possible prosecution. In 1987 he prohibited a priest from seeking therapy for his sexual urges towards children because of his belief that a therapist might report the crimes to the police.          

 

No member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy fought longer and more energetically than Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles to conceal the decades-long scandal involving the rape and intimidation of children and their parents by rogue priests. For years, the cardinal withheld seamy church records from parents, victims and the public, bringing about endless litigation and thoughtless claims of confidentiality in the courts. Cardinal Mahony received psychological reports on some priests that suggested the possibility of many other victims, but there was no indication that he or other church leaders under his control investigated the complaints any further.                               

 

Priests were sent out of the State of California for psychological treatment because they revealed more when their therapists were not required to report child abuse to law enforcement, as they were in California.                                                                                               

In 1991, the cardinal made a foolish decision with respect to Reverend Lynn Caffoe, a priest suspected of locking boys in his room, videotaping their crotches and running up a $100 phone sex bill while at the same time, he was with a boy. Caffoe was sent away for therapy and removed from the ministry, but the cardinal didn't move to defrock him until 2004, a decade after the archdiocese lost track of him as a fugitive from justice. However, a check of the Social Security index disclosed no report of his demise, so it was believed that he was alive somewhere. Caffoe actually died in 2009, six years after a newspaper reporter found him working at a homeless mission two blocks from a Salinas, California elementary school.   

                                                                                                  

The cardinal’s aide, Monsignor Thomas Curry, cautioned the cardinal against therapy for one confessed sexual predator lest the therapist felt obliged to tell authorities and scandalize the archdiocese. The two discussed another priest, Msgr. Peter Garcia, who admitted specializing in the rape of Latino immigrant children and threatened at least one boy with deportation if he complained. Monsignor Curry told the cardinal that there could be as many as 20 young people able to identify the priest in first-degree felony cases. Cardinal Mahony ordered that monsignor Garcia stay out of California after his release from a New Mexico treatment center out of fear that the archdiocese might very well have to face some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors.                                                                             

 

Monsignor Curry had also managed to advance up the hierarchical ladder even though his conduct merited instant removal from his post as auxiliary bishop for Santa Barbara.  On 31 January 2013, Curry resigned his post as auxiliary bishop of the Santa Barbara Pastoral Region, in response to the Archdiocese's release of thousands of pages of files documenting sexual abuse by priests and efforts to cover them up. The files documented decisions Curry made in his role as Vicar for Clergy in the years preceding his ordination as auxiliary bishop, which included reportedly interfering with police investigations into abuse claims.  Despite his withdrawal from public duties within the Archdiocese, he remains an active Auxiliary Bishop and has not submitted his resignation to the Pope. The new pope may insist on Curry’s resignation.            

 

When parents complained that Reverend Nicholas Aguilar Rivera molested children in Los Angeles, church officials under the cardinal’s authority told the parents to wait before they called the police however because of that two-day delay for them to call the police, it unfortunately allowed him to flee to Mexico. At least 26 children told the police they were abused by this priest during his 10 months in Los Angeles. The now-defrocked priest is believed to be in Mexico and still remains a fugitive from the law.                                                     

 

In another instance, archdiocese officials paid a secret salary to a priest exiled to the Philippines after he and six other clerics were accused of having sex with a teen and impregnating her.                                                                      

 

There is also the case of the Reverend Michael Baker, who was sentenced to prison in 2007 for child molestation at least two decades after the priest confessed his abuse to the cardinal. He ordered Baker to undertake psychological treatment after the priest told him in 1986 that he had molested two brothers over a period of seven years. Baker returned to his ministry the next year with a doctor's recommendation that he be defrocked immediately if he spent any time with minors. Despite several documented instances of being alone with boys, the priest wasn't removed from ministry until 2000. Around the same time, the church learned he was conducting baptisms without permission.                                                                                                      

 

Church officials discussed announcing Baker's abuse in churches where he had worked, but the cardinal rejected the idea. Baker was eventually sent to prison and he was paroled in 2011. It is alleged that he molested 20 children in his 26-year career as a priest. At the time, the clergy under the cardinal’s control were not mandated to report the sex abuse to the police so the church let the victims' families decide whether or not to contact the police.                                   

 

As many as 12,000 pages graphically demonstrate how Cardinal Mahony, sought to conceal the abuse from authorities. It was the cardinal’s obligation under the primacy of secular law to instantly notify authorities of any priest’s criminal behavior. Instead, he invoked a nonexistent church privilege to hide miscreant clergy so that he could shield the church and his own reputation from the bad publicity that would reflect against the Church since Cardinal Mahony is currently a member of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. He as you are aware is also the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See and Congregation for Eastern Churches.                                                                                                        

Many lives of families have been ruined and their faith destroyed and Cardinal Mahony was at the center of this scandal because of his unconscionable efforts to shield perpetrators and he seemed more concerned about protecting his own image than notifying the police of the names of the child abusers.

                                                                                    

 

Mahony finally admitted that the abuse was a terrible sin and crime, after a series of civil trials into sex abuses that occurred since the 1940s were to begin. The agreement settled all outstanding civil lawsuits against the Archdiocese. 

      

 

Under the leadership of the cardinal in 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles quietly appropriated $115 million from its 11 cemeteries maintenance fund and used it to cover the $660-million abuse settlement with molestation victims. The church did not inform relatives of the deceased that it had taken the money, which amounted to 88% of the fund from the cemeteries maintenance fund.  The money was used from the fund in order to enable the archdiocese to protect the assets of the parishes’ schools and essential ministries. California law prohibits private cemeteries from touching the principal of their perpetual care funds and bars them from using the interest on those funds for anything other than maintenance. Those laws, however, do not apply to cemeteries run by religious organizations. 

                                                                                                           

Cardinal Mahony’s actions on clergy sexual abuse of minors in the years before, during and after the 1980s has been widely criticized for withholding information on abusive priests from police and other civil authorities. He also engaged in tough, combative legal fights to prevent disclosure of confidential archdiocesan records in hundreds of victims’ lawsuits.

                                                                                                            

 Cardinal Mahony knew that Oliver O'Grady, a priest serving under him who was a native of the Republic of Ireland, had a two-decade history of sexually abusing and molesting children (including one infant) but the cardinal failed to keep him away from children. In 1984, a Stockton police investigation into sexual abuse allegations against O'Grady was reportedly closed after diocesan officials promised to remove the priest from any contact with children. Instead, Cardinal Mahony reassigned O'Grady to a parish approximately 50 miles east, in San Andreas, where O'Grady continued to molest and rape children in his parish. By 2012, local authorities had obtained internal Church documents showing that Cardinal Mahony had organized the movement of sexual predators across jurisdictional boundaries to complicate any possible prosecution. In 1987 he prohibited a priest from seeking therapy for his sexual urges towards children because of his belief that a therapist might report the crimes to the police.          

 

No member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy fought longer and more energetically than Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles to conceal the decades-long scandal involving the rape and intimidation of children and their parents by rogue priests. For years, the cardinal withheld seamy church records from parents, victims and the public, bringing about endless litigation and thoughtless claims of confidentiality. Cardinal Mahony received psychological reports on some priests that suggested the possibility of many other victims, but there is no indication that he or other church leaders under his control investigated the complaints any further. Priests were sent out of the State of California for psychological treatment because they revealed more when their therapists were not required to report child abuse to law enforcement, as they were in California.

                                                                                             

In 1991, the cardinal made a foolish decision with respect to Reverend Lynn Caffoe, a priest suspected of locking boys in his room, videotaping their crotches and running up a $100 phone sex bill while at the same time, he was with a boy. Caffoe was subsequently sent away for therapy and removed from the ministry, but the cardinal didn't move to defrock him until 2004, a decade after the archdiocese lost track of him as a fugitive from justice. However, a check of the Social Security index disclosed no report of his demise, so it was believed that he was alive somewhere. Caffoe actually died in 2009, six years after a newspaper reporter found him working at a homeless mission two blocks from a Salinas, California elementary school.                                                                                      

 

The cardinal’s aide, Monsignor Thomas Curry, cautioned the cardinal against therapy for one confessed sexual predator lest the therapist felt obliged to tell authorities and scandalize the archdiocese. The two discussed another priest, Msgr. Peter Garcia, who admitted specializing in the rape of Latino immigrant children and threatened at least one boy with deportation if he complained. Cardinal Mahony ordered that the monsignor stay out of California after his release from a New Mexico treatment center out of fear that the archdiocese might very well have to face some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors. Monsignor Curry told the cardinal that there could be as many as 20 young people able to identify the priest in first-degree felony cases.      

 

Monsignor Curry has also managed to advance up the hierarchical ladder and in my respectful opinion; it would seem that his conduct merited instant removal from his current post as auxiliary bishop for Santa Barbara.                                                                                    

When parents complained that Reverend Nicholas Aguilar Rivera molested children in Los Angeles, church officials under the cardinal’s authority told the parents to wait before they called the police however because of that two-day delay for them to call the police, it unfortunately allowed him to flee to Mexico. At least 26 children told the police they were abused by this priest during his 10 months in Los Angeles. The now-defrocked priest is believed to be in Mexico and still remains a fugitive from the law.                                                     

 

In another instance, archdiocese officials paid a secret salary to a priest exiled to the Philippines after he and six other clerics were accused of having sex with a teen and impregnating her.  

                                                                                                             

There is also the case of the Reverend Michael Baker, who was sentenced to prison in 2007 for child molestation at least two decades after the priest confessed his abuse to the cardinal. He ordered Baker to undertake psychological treatment after the priest told him in 1986 that he had molested two brothers over a period of seven years. Baker returned to his ministry the next year with a doctor's recommendation that he be defrocked immediately if he spent any time with minors. Despite several documented instances of being alone with boys, the priest wasn't removed from ministry until 2000. Around the same time, the church learned he was conducting baptisms without permission.                                                                                                      

 

Church officials discussed announcing Baker's abuse in churches where he had worked, but the cardinal rejected the idea. Baker was eventually sent to prison and he was paroled in 2011. It is alleged that he molested 20 children in his 26-year career as a priest. At the time, the clergy under the cardinal’s control were not mandated to report the sex abuse to the police so the church let the victims' families decide whether or not to contact the police.                                   

 

As many as 12,000 pages graphically demonstrate how Cardinal Mahony, sought to conceal the abuse from authorities. It was the cardinal’s obligation under the primacy of secular law to instantly notify authorities of any priest’s criminal behavior. Instead, he invoked a nonexistent church privilege to hide miscreant clergy so that he could shield the church and his own reputation from the bad publicity that would reflect against the Church since Cardinal Mahony is currently a member of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. He as you are aware is also the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See and Congregation for Eastern Churches.                                                                                                         

Many lives of families have been ruined and their faith destroyed and Cardinal Mahony is at the center of this scandal because of his unconscionable efforts to shield perpetrators and even now he seems more concerned about protecting his own image than notifying the police of the names of the child abusers.                                                                                    

The cardinal claims that he didn’t know how to handle sex abuse claims, as he had not learned about it at college. He claimed that during his two years (1962-1964) that he spent in graduate school earning a Master’s Degree in Social Work, no textbook and no lecture ever referred to the sexual abuse of children. I find that hard to believe that he was so naïve. How could he go through his adult life and not know that child molesting is not only a sin but it is also illegal? Even grade school drop outs know that there are laws that prohibit child sex crimes and that when we know about or suspect child sex crimes, we are supposed to call the police and that responsibility applies especially to priests who are in a position of authority over children.    

 

The role of Cardinal Mahony continuing to be the leading Catholic authority in the Los Angeles archdiocese was troubling to Catholics in that region who were angered as to why the Church had been doing nothing to replace him with someone more suitable.

 

On January 31, 2013, Archbishop Gómez relieved Mahony of his public and episcopal duties in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles by the order of the pope following the release of personnel files documenting priest sexual-abuse cases during part of Mahony’s tenure.                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                   I wonder how the parents of those young victims feel when they realized that when Cardinal Mahoney was their priest and they confessed their sins to him, his later sins would by far exceed their own sins.

 

A wise man will recognize his own imperfections and his mistakes and in doing so, he knows that he must take remedial steps to correct himself so that these areas of human frailty will not come back to haunt him and wreak more suffering on others, be they his loved ones or strangers.