Cardinal who covered up child sex abuse scandal will close Pope’s coffin | World | News

One of the cardinals set to oversee the closing of Pope Francis’ coffin was previously barred from public ministry due to his involvement in concealing a child sex abuse scandal. Roger Michael Mahony, who was relieved of all his administrative and public duties in Los Angeles by his successor in 2013, is now under scrutiny.

This followed the release of thousands of pages of files on priests accused of child molestation by the LA archdiocese, the largest in the US. The documents revealed that Mahony, now 89, played a role in protecting accused priests from investigation during the 1980s.

Mahony is a member of the College of Cardinals, who have gathered in Vatican City this week following the death of Pope Francis. He is one of 11 senior clergymen and part of a larger group who have been ‘requested’ to participate in the closing of the coffin ceremony tomorrow at 8pm, ahead of Francis’ funeral on Saturday.

It remains unclear who made the decision to assign Mahony to this role tomorrow night, the Mirror reports.

Mahony retired in 2011 after leading the LA archdiocese for 25 years, before the release of the 12,000 pages of files. The documents indicated that instead of defrocking priests and alerting the police, the archdiocese sent priests who had abused children to treatment facilities outside of California.

According to the files, this was largely because therapists in California were legally required to report any evidence of child abuse to the police.

In a shocking revelation from 1986, Cardinal Mahony expressed concerns about the potential legal consequences if Monsignor Peter Garcia, an abusive priest, returned to the archdiocese. “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,” he wrote to a New Mexico treatment centre.

Monsignor Garcia, who was ordained in 1966, confessed to abusing over a dozen boys, many from families of illegal immigrants. In one harrowing instance, he threatened to have one of his victims deported if the abuse was disclosed, according to documents.

Despite his admissions, Garcia never faced criminal charges and has since passed away.

Another disturbing case involved Rev. Michael Baker, who, after admitting to child abuse, was sent for treatment in New Mexico. In 1987, Msgr.

Thomas J. Curry alerted Cardinal Mahony to the gravity of Baker’s actions: “he is very aware that what he did comes within the scope of the criminal law in California.”

They concurred it would be prudent for Baker not to revisit his California counselor, who had failed to report him.

Decades later, Father Baker was finally convicted for his crimes against children. In a 2013 statement, Cardinal Mahony offered an apology to the victims, acknowledging the church’s initial failure to protect children.

He noted, “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.”

Accusations have been levelled against Francis for his perceived inaction over the child sex abuse scandal that has tainted his tenure as pope. On Monday, shortly after his death, survivors came forward to claim that he did not make any transformative changes to a culture that harboured sexual abusers, nor did he implement definitive measures.

One organisation lamentably called it the “tragedy of his papacy”.