We may now know why the Vatican didn’t choose Cardinal Timothy Dolan to be the new Pope. According to hundreds of documents released on Monday by order of the judge presiding over the bankruptcy of the Milwaukee archdiocese, conservative Catholic Cardinal Dolan shielded pedophile priests even as he investigated charges leveled against other priests by victims.

According to Raw Story:

The documents “showed in great detail the Milwaukee archdiocese regularly reassigned priests who were accused of sexual molestation to new parishes and Dolan himself asking the Vatican permission to transfer $57 million to a trust fund to protect it against court action. In 2011, the Milwaukee archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing the financial drain of settling sexual-abuse claims and acknowledging missteps by the church in dealing with pedophile priests.”

Even though the Milwaukee archdiocese had $57 million in its account, they were able to transfer it and then claim bankruptcy because they were supposedly “financially drained.” Sounds like bankruptcy fraud, doesn’t it? Now if the archdiocese wants to declare moral bankruptcy, that would be more acceptable.

From 2002 to 2009, Dolan served as the Archbishop of Milwaukee. Documents show that the Milwaukee archdiocese regularly transferred priests accused of pedophilia and also paid them off to leave the church instead of properly punishing them and handing them over to authorities for arrest. This confirms a 2012 New York Times report that Cardinal Dolan “authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee.” When questioned about the payoff. Dolan called the accusation “false, preposterous and unjust.”

In other words, Cardinal Dolan lied when he claimed that he did no such thing. If any ordinary American citizen had shielded pedophiles, they would be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But Dolan, now the Archbishop of New York and President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is allowed to roam free like many of the priests he helped to shield.

Now that the truth is coming out, it would also seem that Dolan’s past shows of sympathy for victims is once again proven to be disingenuous. During his investigation of St. Louis priests, Dolan told the media that:

“It is impossible to exaggerate the gravity of the situation, and the suffering that victims feel, because I’ve spent the last four months being with them, crying with them, having them express their anger to me.”

Now that it is clear that Dolan protected pedophile priests, this show of sympathy toward victims means very little, just as it did in 2011, when Dolan thanked Catholic League president Bill Donohue for referring to the non-profit support group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests as “phony victims.”

Dolan is a star in conservative politics because he has anti-gay and anti-abortion views. For years, he has pounded his chest calling for banning same-sex marriage, placing women’s reproductive decisions under the jurisdiction of men, and a ban on contraception. All the while, Dolan has worked to shield pedophiles from prosecution even though pedophilia, unlike being gay or having an abortion or using birth control, is a crime in the United States. To Dolan, it appears being gay is bad, choosing to get an abortion is bad, using contraception is bad, but priests raping little boys isn’t that bad. In fact, any priest that rapes a child is more likely to be rewarded rather than punished.

Documents also show that in addition to the $20,000 paid to pedophile priests to leave the church, these priests were given a $1,250 monthly pension benefit and health and dental insurance. It’s like the priests have been given a bonus for raping and molesting children. It’s a great deal for any predator. Just become a priest and the church will take care of you for life even if you’re a low-life scumbag who deserves to be locked away in prison. You’ll avoid prosecution, get paid not to work, and unlike millions of law abiding Americans, you’ll get health and dental insurance. The Catholic Church is the greatest workplace on Earth if you want to be a pedophile. And Cardinal Dolan is an accessory to these crimes. He helped cover them up. So the only questions that really need to be asked at this point are why is Cardinal Dolan still a free man and why do conservatives still support him?