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“His Eminence” Roger M. Mahony

It took way, way too long, but the U.S. attorney has finally launched a grand jury investigation into the actions of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony when dealing with rapist priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Here’s the breaking news in the Los Angeles Times. The lead by Scott Glover and Jack Leonard:

The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles has launched a federal grand jury investigation into Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in connection with his response to the alleged molestation of children by priests in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the case.

The probe, in which U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O’Brien is personally involved, is aimed at determining whether Mahony, and possibly other church leaders, committed “honest services fraud” by failing to adequately deal with priests accused of sexually abusing children, said the sources, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.

[snip]

As the Catholic Church’s highest-ranking official in Southern California, Mahony was dogged for years by allegations of covering up the sexual misconduct of priests. The district attorney’s office launched a grand jury investigation into the archdiocese several years ago, but no charges were filed. Two years ago, the archdiocese agreed to pay $660 million to 508 people who accused priests of sexual abuse. The payout was the largest settlement in a scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church nationwide.

Reading the initial story, the legal tactic seems a bit of a long shot, but why not try–especially if it can be used to punish other bishops, archbishops and cardinals who covered up and hid rapist priests, many of whom went on to commit sex crimes on other children?

To review just a few of Mahony’s sins (click here to see them all), he quietly kept two convicted child molesters in ministry. A priest who admitted to Mahony that he had molested two boys was allowed to keep his job, the authorities weren’t told, parishioners weren’t warned, and (you guessed it), the priest went on to molest others. Mahony’s handling of serial rapist of little children, Oliver O’Grady, was laid out with sickening beauty in the Oscar-nominated documentary, “Deliver Us From Evil.” As late as 2002, Mahony had at least eight known molesting priests working in his diocese, and only removed them when forced to do so by a legal settlement.

At one point, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating–who chaired the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board set up to get to the root causes of the sex scandal–compared Mahony and his fellow bishops to the Mafia in the way they tried to obstruct justice. In the board’s later report, Mahony was singled out for special criticism.

It’s always struck me that protecting child rapists and allowing these sick priests continued access to children–whose parents believed their kids were totally safe with their beloved Catholic priest–had to be some sort of crime.

So I hope the U.S. attorney’s inventive legal strategy works. And I hope other bishops who knowingly put children in the hands of rapist priests will get the same federal grand jury treatment. And I hope this causes them a tremendous amount of worry and grief.

You see, theses bishops didn’t lose any sleep about what happened to the children in their diocese as they aided and abetted child molesters. But the bishops do care tremendously about retaining power. And any threat to that would cause them grave concern.

P.S. The timing of this investigation–almost seven years after the sex scandal broke–is curious. I’m guessing having former President Bush out of power had something to do with it.