One of the cardinals set to preside over the closing of Pope Francis’ coffin was banned from public ministry for his role in covering up the child sex abuse scandal.
Roger Michael Mahony was stripped of all his administrative and public duties in Los Angeles by his successor in 2013. It came after the LA archdiocese, the largest in the US, released thousands of pages of files on priests accused of child molestation. The documents showed that Mahony, now 89, helped shield accused priests from investigation in the 1980s. Mahony is a member of the College of Cardinals, who have descended on Vatican City this week in the wake of Pope Francis’s death.
He is one of 11 senior clergymen and part of a larger group to have been ‘requested’ to take part in the closing of the coffin celebration tomorrow at 8pm, before Francis’ funeral on Saturday. It is unclear who made the decision to put Mahony in the position tomorrow night.
He retired in 2011, having run the LA archdiocese for 25 years, before the 12,000 pages of files were released. The documents showed that rather than defrocking priests and contacting the police, the archdiocese sent priests who had molested children to out-of-state treatment facilities. The files said this was largely because therapists in California were legally obligated to report any evidence of child abuse to the police.
In 1986, Cardinal Mahony wrote to a New Mexico treatment center where one abusive priest, Msgr. Peter Garcia, had been sent. “I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors,” Cardinal Mahony wrote.
Monsignor Garcia admitted to abusing more than a dozen young boys, most of them from families of illegal immigrants, since he was ordained in 1966, and in at least one case he threatened to have a boy he had molested deported if he talked about it, the documents said. He was never criminally prosecuted, and has since died.
In a 1987 letter regarding the Rev. Michael Baker, who had also been sent for treatment in New Mexico after admitting that he had abused young boys, Msgr. Thomas J. Curry wrote to Cardinal Mahony that “he is very aware that what he did comes within the scope of the criminal law in California.”
“It is surprising the counselor he attended in California did not report him, and we agreed it would be better if Mike did not return to him,” the letter continued.
Father Baker was convicted of sexually abusing children – decades later. In a statement in 2013, Mahony apologised to victims of abuse. He said at the time: “Various steps toward safeguarding all children in the church began here in 1987 and progressed year by year as we learned more about those who abused and the ineffectiveness of so-called ‘treatments’ at the time.
“Nonetheless, even as we began to confront the problem, I remained naïve myself about the full and lasting impact these horrible acts would have on the lives of those who were abused by men who were supposed to be their spiritual guides.”
Francis has been accused of not doing enough on the child sex abuse scandal during his papacy. Survivors of abuse said on Monday, hours after his death, that the pope failed to fundamentally change the culture that allowed abusers to flourish and failed to deliver decisive action.
It was the “tragedy of his papacy”, said one organisation.
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.
