Los Angeles’ pompous top Catholic, Cardinal Roger Mahony, recently compared patriotic Arizonans who support border security to Nazis, even though polling shows that 70 percent of voters favor the tough new legislation.
(Funny how pundits wring their hands over the worsening criminal anarchy in Mexico, but when Americans act to preserve public safety in our own country, that somehow is “mean-spirited” to use Mahony’s crude terminology. )
But his well documented activities of protecting pedophile priests keep popping up, which should disqualify him from making moral judgements (which are wrong and reprehensible anyway).
Mahony has presided over the Los Angeles diocese since 1985, and fought the release of church documents detailing parishioner complaints from police. (See the LA Times 2005 article, Study Reveals Vast Scope of Priest Abuse.) He also allowed priests facing prosecution to flee the country.
Perhaps the authorities will use Mahony’s retirement next year as an opportunity to pursue justice for his many crimes. Until then, there is a lawsuit on the horizon:
Attorneys sue LA, Mexico City cardinals over abuse, AP, April 20, 2010
A Mexican citizen filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Tuesday accusing Roman Catholic cardinals in Mexico City and Los Angeles of conspiring to shelter a Mexican pedophile priest in both countries.
The lawsuit alleges then-Bishop Norberto Rivera, head of the Diocese of Tehuacan, and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony shuttled the Rev. Nicolas Aguilar Rivera between the U.S. and Mexico in the late 1980s to shield him from prosecution. Parishioners in both countries complained he had molested young boys.
The Mexican bishop has since been elevated to cardinal for the Archdiocese of Mexico City. He has no relation to the accused priest.
Aguilar Rivera was defrocked last summer and remains at large in Mexico, where he was believed to be living out of his car in Puebla, in central Mexico. He has been wanted by U.S. authorities on 19 felony counts of lewd conduct since he fled his temporary post in Los Angeles in 1988 and returned to Mexico.
