Cardinal Mahoney Hid Catholic Priests from Law Enforcement
Secret records of Los Angeles Archdiocese show that Cardinal Mahoney and other top Los Angeles priests moved child molester priests out of state to avoid police investigations. Court orders in civil lawsuits in Los Angeles required public release of priest personnel files February 1, 2013.
(Image courtesy of http://www.bishop-accountability.org/)
The 20,000 pages of documents released document a conspiracy for at least 40 years led by recently retired Cardinal Roger M. Mahoney. The Catholic Church has fought for years to keep these files secret but the survivors of abuse who brought the civil lawsuits persevered to make the conspiracy public. Many of the survivors of abuse felt vindicated by the proof that at least 124 priests were raping, drugging, and abusing children and were being protected by Cardinal Mahoney and the officials of the Archdiocese.
Cardinal Mahoney and other top priests in Los Angeles had usually accused the abused children of lying and making up false allegations of abuse. The files that were released show that the Church tried to delay investigations so that statutes of limitations would run out on both civil and criminal cases.
The documents show that Cardinal Mahoney knew that mental health counselors in California were required to report child abuse to authorities so they arranged to have perverted priests evaluated by psychologists in other states so that the abuse of children could be kept secret from law enforcement.
Current Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez criticized Cardinal Mahoney who retired 2 years ago at his mandatory retirement age. Archbishop Gomez restricted Cardinal Mahoney’s faculties to perform confirmations as punishment. Only the Vatican can remove Cardinal Mahony from the priesthood. There has been no action or comment from the Vatican. This is the first time ever that a bishop has criticized another bishop for protecting child molesters.
The Los Angeles documents confirm the existence of a worldwide conspiracy in the Catholic Church to protect child molester priests and accuse abused children of being liars. A Petition has been filed with the International Court in the Hague accusing the Pope of crimes against humanity but that is unlikely to go anywhere due to world politics. The Vatican has sovereign immunity from most criminal charges since the Holy See enjoys status as an independent nation. The Vatican received this sovereign status from Mussolini in World War II in exchange for supporting Mussolini’s fascist regime.
Pope Benedict who was called Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he was anointed Pope was in charge of handling child molester priest reports worldwide before becoming Pope. That is the basis of the crime against humanity charge against him.
I have personally investigated cases in Florida where priests were transferred out of the United States when law enforcement started to investigate. These international transfers were always successful in protecting the priests. I hope someday Interpol will conduct a worldwide investigation so the full extent of the conspiracy can be revealed.