Is a Federal Indictment In Store for Cardinal Roger Mahony?

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It was bound to happen, sooner or later, and although it may well be later, Cardinal Mahony, seen at right with Congresswoman Diane Watson of California, may soon have to pay the piper for his efforts to cover up pedophilia by Catholic priest. Here is the story from The Daily Beast through Reuters:

No U.S. Catholic leader as been prosecuted for the church’s child sex scandals. But officials are weighing obstruction and perjury charges against Cardinal Roger Mahony—and studying emails showing Mahony discussing with his lawyers ways to avoid giving law enforcement the names of abusive priests.

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles faces the prospect of an unwelcome retirement gift when he steps down in February: A federal indictment.

Law-enforcement officials tell The Daily Beast that prosecutors are weighing charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury against the 74-year-old cardinal and his deputies over allegations that they covered up rampant child sexual abuse within the archdiocese of Los Angeles.

“The church would like to pretend this investigation has gone away,” said one official familiar with the grand jury’s work. “It hasn’t.”

The cardinal denies wrongdoing and insists he has been assured he is not a target of the federal inquiry. But officials with knowledge of the grand jury’s work say that Mahony remains at the center of the Justice Department’s two-year-old investigation.

Federal prosecutors are paying special attention to seemingly damning emails between the cardinal and his lawyers—in which Mahony outlined tactics to avoid providing prosecutors with the names of abusive priests, the officials said.

One official said the Justice Department has received important assistance from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office; a related investigation by the D.A.’s office stalled because of the restrictive statute of limitations under California state law. No charges are imminent, the official said. But “the church would like to pretend this investigation has gone away. It hasn’t.” The cardinal’s lawyer, J. Michael Hennigan, said in an interview he was “unaware of any indictable crime that might have been conducted by any church official” in the hierarchy of the archdiocese, including Mahony.

The lawyer said Mahony was being unfairly singled out for criticism over policies of the Catholic Church that, while ill-advised, were once routine—specfically, its policy of seeking psychological counseling and treatment for abusive priests, rather than alerting the police. “This guy has taken it for everybody else,” Hennigan said of the cardinal. “And he’s done so in a noble way.”

No national leader of the Catholic Church has been prosecuted as a result of scandals across the country involving pedophile priests.

But lawyers and other advocates for abuse victims in Southern California say they believe there may be an especially strong criminal case against Mahony, if only because of the flood of evidence released from church files as a result of hundreds of civil lawsuits filed against the archdiocese.

The victims groups are pressing the Justice Department to act against the cardinal before his scheduled retirement in February.

The groups say publicly they fear that Mahony, who has led the 4-million-member southern California archdiocese since 1985, will use his retirement as an opportunity to seek refuge in the Vatican. They say they do not believe his assurances that he will remain in California.

“The day that Mahony steps down next year is the day that he leaves for the Vatican and never comes back,” predicted Joelle Casteix, southwestern regional director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

The victims groups draw comparisons to Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, who resigned his post in Massachusetts in 2002 and left for a comfortable new assignment in Rome in the midst of allegations that he covered up for several abusive priests in New England.

As cardinals, Mahony and Law are entitled to diplomatic protections from the Vatican.

“Mahony should be in jail for what he did,” Casteix told The Daily Beast. “I personally know of dozens of people who were molested because of decisions made by Roger Mahony—decisions that he made personally. If I were Mahony, I’d flee the country.”

His lawyers and spokesmen insist that Mahony, who was born in Los Angeles, has no intention of leaving California, let alone the United States, after his scheduled retirement. They say he will not attempt to resettle in the Vatican or anywhere else outside the United States to avoid criminal charges.

Many thanks to Philip Shenon for his contributions to this story.

More here…..

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