AMERICA'S most senior Catholic clergyman has acknowledged promoting a priest who was later charged with several counts of child rape without examining his personal records.
Transcripts released this week from a hearing in June show Cardinal Bernard Law told a closed court session that he had relied on advisers in approving parish appointments, including that of Father Paul Shanley.
Father Shanley, 71, who is now retired, had worked for several decades in Massachusetts before he was assigned to a parish in California.
The appointment was made despite notes on his records showing that he had been the subject of sexual abuse complaints as far back as 1966. Father Shanley has pleaded not guilty to charges of child abuse and is due to go to trial in November.
Cardinal Law, also the Archbishop of Boston, said it would have been helpful if the information about the complaints made against Father Shanley had been readily available.
The 200-page transcript and videotapes were released as Cardinal Law resumed his closed-door depositions in civil suits involving sexual abuse claims against Father Shanley.
He has also been ordered to testify in civil cases against former priest John Geoghan brought by alleged sexual abuse victims. __________
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It was a set of documents released in connection with Geoghan's January trial, which saw him jailed for child abuse, that set off the scandal that has rocked the American Catholic Church.
The Boston archdiocese has remained at the centre of the scandal and the 66-year-old cardinal has been forced to mount aggressive legal strategies as a defendant in a cluster of embarrassing lawsuits.
In his testimony on the Father Shanley case, Cardinal Law was asked questions about his knowledge of sexual abuse by priests and measures the Church took to avoid scandal.
The man sometimes described before the scandal as a potential American pope admitted that in hindsight he had made a mistake after promoting one priest to a parish despite the man's admission that he had abused a child.
"He was allowed to continue parish work, yes, after intervention by a medical source," Cardinal Law said. He said that he now believed he should have told parishioners of the charge.
Cardinal Law would not comment on Tuesday about the transcripts. Calls to Donna Morrissey, the spokeswoman for the archdiocese, were not returned.
Lawyer Roderick MacLeish, representing an alleged Shanley abuse victim and his family, said he could not comment on the substance of the cardinal's testimony.
But he stressed the matters dealt with were very important.
"It goes well beyond the Catholic Church," he said. "It also shows how we deal with children in our society." -- LOS ANGELES TIMES
