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Source: New York Times, March 6, 2002
The agreement, which has yet to be completed, would resolve most of the lawsuits that seek to hold the archdiocese, and in some cases Cardinal Bernard F. Law, responsible for the actions of priests accused of sexually abusing children.
The agreement, first reported in The Boston Globe, would settle 84 lawsuits involving John J. Geoghan, 66, a defrocked priest who was shuttled from parish to parish by archdiocesan officials, though they knew about his history of pedophilia. That would leave four other lawsuits against Mr. Geoghan and 48 lawsuits against other priests unresolved.
The Geoghan case and disclosures about how the church handled it have created a scandal over pedophile priests in Boston, one that is having reverberations in dioceses around the country. Since January, Cardinal Law, the nation's senior Catholic leader, has apologized twice for allowing Father Geoghan to be placed in a parish in 1984 when the cardinal knew of his pedophile past.
The archdiocese has since turned over to prosecutors the names of nearly 90 priests accused of sexually abusing children in the last 50 years. Ten priests were still in active ministry, though suspended from parishes.
Other dioceses, including Philadelphia, Los Angeles and St. Louis, have suspended priests in response to the scandal in Boston and have given prosecutors the names of priests accused of abuse.
The scandal has also brought calls in Boston for the resignation of Cardinal Law, and polls have indicated that a majority of Catholics believe that the archdiocese covered up cases of abuse by priests. The cardinal has repeatedly said in recent weeks that he will not step down.
The tentative agreement in the Geoghan case would give 86 plaintiffs in the 84 lawsuits $232,000 to $348,000 each. The awards for each plaintiff would be decided by a mediator, and for the agreement to be final, each plaintiff and the 17 defendants, including the cardinal, must approve the terms.
Some plaintiffs have more serious complaints than others, and would receive larger sums. Twelve plaintiffs are parents of children who say they were abused, and they would receive smaller settlements.
The archdiocese has already settled about 100 cases against Mr. Geoghan for about $15 million.
Mitchell Garabedian, the lawyer for the 86 plaintiffs, said he had been trying to negotiate a settlement for 11 months. He would not discuss the terms of the tentative agreement, except to say that unlike the previous settlements in the Geoghan case, this one would not prevent the parties from discussing the case.
"They won't have confidentiality requirements if I have anything to do with it," Mr. Garabedian said.
Archdiocesan officials also declined to discuss the specifics of the agreement. One person with knowledge of the church's side of the negotiations said "a great many issues" needed to be resolved in a meeting between lawyers that began this afternoon. The meeting ended without resolution of all of them.
"We're close," Mr. Garabedian said.
Donna M. Morrissey, an archdiocesan spokeswoman, said: "We want to come to a fair and just resolution of these cases as quickly as possible, one that is in the best interests of the victims. We believe that all the parties are working in good faith."
The tentative agreement was reached as Mr. Garabedian sought this week for the fourth time to depose Cardinal Law in the Geoghan cases. The person with knowledge of the archdiocesan position said that the cardinal would not be deposed if a settlement was near.
Mr. Geoghan does not have a lawyer in the civil cases and has not contested the allegations. Last month, he began serving a 9- to 10- year sentence for fondling a 10-year- old boy. He faces two more trials on sexual abuse charges.
One plaintiff in the Geoghan case said tonight that he was not impressed with the dollar amount of the tentative agreement.
"When you talk about $250,000 for years of going over this in my mind, that's peanuts to me," said Ralph DelVecchio, 45, who said Mr. Geoghan molested him when he was 10 or 11 years old. On the other hand, Mr. DelVecchio said, "How does anybody put a price on the whole thing?"
Source: New York Times, March 5, 2002
ST. AGATHA, Me., March 1 — The Catholic roots of this far-northern valley are about as deep as they get. More than two centuries after Catholics marked the land with a large cross, people in and around this town named for a martyred saint are still steeped in the faith.
So naturally they were stunned last month when the Rev. Michael Doucette, under orders from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maine, announced that 22 years ago he was "intimately involved" with a 15- year-old boy in another parish.
"You could hear a pin drop in that church," said one parishioner, Carole Plourde.
But since then, the community has faced what many consider an even more painful trial. The diocese asked the parish council here to decide whether it wants to keep Father Doucette or have him removed.
After the accusations of child molesting by priests in Boston, several dioceses, including New Hampshire's and Philadelphia's, immediately suspended any priests ever accused of abusing children. Maine's diocese took a different approach, ordering Father Doucette and another priest who had acknowledged sexual misconduct to make public confessions. Bishop Joseph J. Gerry asked the parish councils to vote on what should be done, although he will not necessarily heed their recommendations.
Parishioners here have especially agonized over a decision because both priests are from the St. John Valley, an isolated stretch of potato farms and paper mills where people carry centuries-old French names and salt their speech with French.
In recent weeks, diocese after diocese across the country have publicly acknowledged that they tried to rehabilitate priests accused of molesting children rather than remove them. St. John Valley offers a particularly stark example of one important factor in those decisions: a global shortage of priests.
One out of six parishes in the country now has no resident priest, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, up from 1 out of 30 in 1965.
Few places have been affected more by the priest shortage than this remote community a few miles south of the Canadian border. Four churches have closed here in the last five years and many priests cover several communities. Father Doucette is pastor of churches in St. Agatha, Frenchville and Sinclair.
While the diocese, 350 miles away in Portland, promises to replace the priests if they are removed, the spokeswoman, Sue Bernard, acknowledges there is "a very short pool" and no guarantee that replacements will understand French or this insular region.
"We're an entirely culturally different area of Maine," said Ryan Pelletier, the town manager of St. Agatha (called Ste. Agathe by locals). "I hear a lot of people talk about the diocese as the big Portland machine. I find it very strange that both priests are now in the St. John Valley."
Curiously, the case of the second priest, the Rev. John Audibert of Madawaska, is less complicated for parishioners. Father Audibert, a valley native, had told them a few years ago. Many had already known because Father Audibert's victim, 16 when he was molested 26 years ago in Caribou, Me., had become a victims' advocate, publicly accusing the priest in 1993.
In 1999, there was more publicity when the victim, Peter Keaton, was convicted of molesting a 10-year-old boy, who in turn was accused of molesting a 3-year-old boy. But while a few people here see the case as evidence of a pernicious spiral started by priestly abuse, most parishioners have forgiven and stood behind Father Audibert who, like Father Doucette, declined to be interviewed.
People are struggling more in St. Agatha, where the usual winter past- times are ice fishing, racing dog sleds and betting on when the ice will melt on Long Lake.
For one thing, Father Doucette's victim, David Gagnon, 37 and living in Ottawa, started talking about the abuse, which Mr. Gagnon said began in Biddeford, Me., and lasted three years. Mr. Gagnon, who broke a silence imposed by a lawsuit settlement because he believed the priest and the bishop had minimized the abuse, traveled 12 hours by bus to speak to the parish council.
Both sides were wary before the two-hour meeting on Feb. 23 in Sinclair's firehouse, guarded by more sheriff's deputies than for a governor's visit. But Mr. Gagnon found council members welcoming and the council members said they found him respectful and genuinely hurt.
"This is uncharted waters," said Kevin Lavoie, acting president of the parish council. "Do we feel that our priest has the ability to continue his ministry effectively?"
There is resentment of the diocese for bringing the matter up now.
"A lot of people here are very angry that the diocese threw those guys out there as fodder," said Judy Paradis, 58, of Frenchville, a former state senator. "We don't publicly confess our sins. We don't expect our pastors to either."
And instead of welcoming the chance to give express their views, many resent the matter being given to the parish council.
"I hear some people say, `Is this Pontius Pilate, handing it over to the people to let them make a decision?' " Mr. Lavoie, 34, said. Some question why the priests were not removed earlier and why parishioners were not told when Father Doucette came to the parish last year.
Ms. Bernard said that after the accusations were reported in the 1990's, both priests were suspended and received treatment. She said they were not diagnosed as pedophiles, partly because there was no proof that either had more than one victim. When placed in new parishes, they were told to avoid children, she said, and a few parishioners were asked to monitor them.
The loudest view supports Father Doucette, saying he is dynamic, a "good talker," and the abuse happened long ago, with no reports of recurrence. Some even suggest Mr. Gagnon was old enough to say no. And many say Catholicism is based on forgiveness — as is life in a town where everyone knows everyone.
"Who's to cast the first stone?" asked Terry Ouellette, 56. "He without sin. The key is to forgive. It's water under the bridge."
Theresa Ringuette, 75, a parish council member, said Father Doucette might be a better man now, having learned from a big mistake.
"I might have done something 22 years ago that I'm not proud of," said Ms. Plourde, 50. "I don't know what the big hoopla about it is now."
Some who favor Father Doucette's removal were afraid to say so.
"If I did something like that, they would put me in jail," said Frank Bycenski, 52, a nonchurchgoing Catholic who sells pigs' feet, schnapps and sundries at the Naborhood Store. "Are priests above the law?"
Paul Bernier, who runs Paul's Gas and Car Wash in Frenchville, said, "I heard someone say, `If anybody should be within the law, it's a person of this stature,' but they wouldn't want to be quoted."
Mr. Bernier, whose sons, 9 and 13, are altar boys, supports Father Doucette, saying, "You can't excuse him for what he did, but he acknowledged it, he paid the price, and as far as I'm concerned he came through with flying colors."
The diocese says Bishop Gerry will not keep priests where they are unwanted, but may remove them even if the parishes want them.
Either way, the scars will be deep.
"I am so torn by this," wrote Don Levesque, editor of the St. John Valley Times. "It's sad, but I'm afraid this is far from over. Let's hope some good comes from somewhere in this story."
Source: New York Times, March 3, 2002
ST. LOUIS, March 1 — It has been 20 years since John Scorfina's family complained to church officials about the Rev. Leroy Valentine's sexualized horseplay with him and his two brothers, which they say ended with the priest molesting 11-year-old John.
It has been four years since the Scorfina brothers took $20,000 each from the Archdiocese of St. Louis on the condition they never speak of the settlement, believing that lawyers for the church had promised to remove the priest from parish work.
But when the three men recently learned that Father Valentine, who has denied any wrongdoing, was an assistant pastor at a church attached to a Catholic elementary school, the order not to speak could not contain their outrage.
"I just don't want any kids to go through what I went through," John Scorfina said this week.
Across the Mississippi River in Belleville, Ill., the priests who have been accused of sexual abuse no longer work in churches. One performs karaoke on Wednesday nights at the Lincoln Jug restaurant in Belleville and another pumps gas at his mother's service station in the small town of Columbia.
In the mid-1990's, the Diocese of Belleville publicly ousted 13 priests accused of inappropriate sexual contact with children, leaving them in an odd limbo — on the church payroll yet without portfolio, called "Father" but barred from administering sacraments or wearing the collar. "In the church," said one, the Rev. Raymond Kownacki, "you're guilty until proven innocent."
Here in the center of the country, these two dioceses — one, in a major city in which a third of the population is Catholic, the other a sprawling 11,000-square-mile expanse of small farm towns — have taken divergent paths in handling accusations of sexual abuse by clergymen.
While Belleville made headlines by removing priests, St. Louis quietly moved them around. Each diocese has a board to review the cases. In Belleville, a victim's say-so was often enough for the board to strip priests of their church ministries; in St. Louis, many victims said they were unaware of the board's existence.
As church officials nationwide rethink their approaches to the issue amid recent scandals, each bank of the river offers lessons about the intractability of the problem.
Belleville's broad public sweep of priests from the altar may have eased victims' pain, but it also left some parishioners uneasy that innocent men were being maligned, while others worried about potential pedophiles being released from the rectory, unwatched. The policy in St. Louis, until this week, of keeping nearly all accusations secret as the archdiocese moved the priests into new parishes, retirement, or low-profile posts, angered victims and may have led to further offenses.
The issue of sexual abuse by priests has taken on new urgency in recent months after disclosures that the Boston Archdiocese had known for years about the sexual misconduct of a priest who was accused of molesting some 130 children. That case led to repeated apologies from the leader of the archdiocese, Cardinal Bernard Law, who reversed his policy of keeping the matter within the church and gave state authorities the names of some 80 priests accused of abusing children over 40 years.
Since then, church leaders in New England and Philadelphia have informed parishes of similar accusations against priests, handed priests' personnel files to prosecutors and relieved some of the accused of their duties. In Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahoney issued a public apology to victims and released a new policy vowing that a priest who had abused a child would never return to active ministry.
Here in St. Louis, an archdiocese of 223 parishes, church officials announced the removal of two pastors today, saying they had "raised the bar" about who is unfit to serve in a parish post. The standard, since 1996, had been that any priest deemed to pose a future risk would be removed. Since the Boston incidents, they say that any priest with a substantiated accusation against him will be ousted. The two priests received treatment after the accusations, which are 15 and 14 years old, officials said.
"As painful as it is, we're going to keep the trust of our people," said Bishop Timothy M. Dolan, the vicar for priests. "We have to be able to say, we have to be able to believe, that there is no priest in a parish against whom there is a credible claim of clerical sexual abuse."
Accusations about pedophilia have plagued the Roman Catholic Church in the United States since the first major case arose nearly 20 years ago in a Louisiana parish. Experts warn that, like alcoholism, pedophilia is a disease that can be controlled but not cured, and that problem priests should not be reassigned to parishes where they are at risk of abusing again.
David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, who lives in St. Louis, says the experiences of Belleville, while flawed, are a starting point as bishops review policies. St. Louis, he says, is a model of what to avoid.
"In Belleville, like virtually every diocese in America, the survivor who comes forward has a long tough road," he said. "But in St. Louis, that road is steep, uphill, and seemingly endless."
St. Louis
Parishioners Uneasy but Dependent
Father Valentine was the favorite of many children at St. Pius X, a parish and school in Glasgow Village, a community of identical aluminum-sided bungalows in the northern part of St. Louis. The priest took them out for ice cream and cheeseburgers. He lavished affection on children like the Scorfinas, who came from single-parent or troubled families. "He was like the dad that wasn't there," said John Scorfina, who now runs a construction company.
Father Valentine, in an interview on Thursday at the rectory of St. Thomas the Apostle, where he is now an associate pastor, said he was barred by the legal settlement from discussing the case. When told that this was his opportunity to respond to whether there was any truth to the accusations, he looked down and shook his head. The senior pastor, the Rev. Henry Garavaglia, who sat in on the interview, said, "Emphatically, I would say no."
Then Father Valentine looked up and said suddenly, "At the same time, parents should always be concerned who's working with their children."
Others who lived in Father Valentine's parish said they felt uneasy about him, particularly when he wrestled with groups of boys and slid them over his body in a game he called "crack your back."
Tom Joseph, 32, remembers a 1982 trip with Father Valentine to the Illinois River in which he says the priest playfully tackled him, pulled down his pants and spanked him. Mr. Joseph, then 13, did not tell anyone, but says that he never went anywhere with the priest again.
Margie Lewis, a single parent, said that one day she called home and was surprised to learn from her daughter that Father Valentine was there wrestling with her son and his friends. She said that she asked him to come to the phone, but he would not, and that he left suddenly.
The Scorfina brothers were also home alone on the day they say that Father Valentine came over, and initiated a wrestling session. Soon, they say, the priest fondled two of the boys and then took John into a bedroom and sodomized him.
"I remember I had a Pittsburgh Steelers poster on the wall, and he made me name all the players until the deed was done," John Scorfina said. Asked in his 1998 deposition how long it lasted, Mr. Scorfina said, "About 10, 15 minutes, maybe, give or take, say, forever, 26 years."
Katie Chrun, the Scorfinas' mother, recalled that when she arrived home her youngest son asked: " `Mom, should a priest touch you like that?' I said, `Like what?' "
Mrs. Chrun said she contacted the authorities, but was told by pastors and a policeman that it was an internal church matter and to keep quiet and be forgiving.
Then, three months later, Mrs. Chrun, her mother and her sister went to meet with Father Valentine in the rectory. Mrs. Chrun and her sister, Linda Thurman, both say that he apologized and said that if he did something wrong, he must have blacked out.
Asked about the meeting, Father Valentine said, "It was an apology that they had taken something wrongly." He said he never said anything about blacking out.
Within the month, Father Valentine was removed with no explanation to the Scorfinas or the parishioners, and in the next 12 years was reassigned to three parishes, two of them with schools. Not until the Scorfina brothers filed their lawsuit, in 1995, were parishioners at the church where he worked at that time informed that there were accusations of child sexual abuse against him. The Scorfina brothers sued the Archbishop of St. Louis and Father Valentine and the archdiocese settled with the family in 1998.
Though they refused to discuss specific cases, Bishop Dolan, who also handles sexual abuse cases for the archdiocese, as well as the archdiocese's lawyer and a psychologist who sits on the review board acknowledged that Father Valentine had been evaluated and treated by medical professionals, and that he had been put on sick leave for four years.
In 2000, as Father Valentine was assigned to his current post in Florissant, a St. Louis suburb, the church's senior pastor sent parishioners a letter informing them about a 1982 accusation of sexual misconduct against Father Valentine. The letter said Father Valentine had "unambiguously denied the allegation" and that therapists had concluded he posed "no threat to children."
Complaints
Some Settled, Some Unheeded
Interviews and court records suggest Father Valentine's is not the only St. Louis case where accusations led to transfers — or where victims complained of being ignored by the chancery.
Church officials refused to say how many priests, before last week, had ever been publicly removed because of sexual abuse. Doug Forsyth, a lawyer who has handled about two dozen cases against the archdiocese — 15 of which he said were settled — and victims' advocates said the only cases they were aware of in which removal was publicly attributed to pedophilia were ones in which the priests did not deny the accusations in court.
One of those priests, the Rev. James Gummersbach, admitted in a 1994 lawsuit that he had abused boys in several parishes over decades. Further, in a sworn statement, he acknowledged that from his ordination in 1954 through the 1990's "the only known action taken by the defendant archdiocese in response to the accusations that defendant Gummersbach had sexual contact with minors was to transfer Gummersbach and instruct him to obtain personal counseling."
One man who said his complaints about a priest went unheeded was Steven Pona. Court records show Mr. Pona, now 33, wrote to the the vicar general in 1983 contending that that the Rev. Bruce Forman, director of the Young Catholic Musicians orchestra and choir, tried to seduce him at a drive-in screening of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." Mr. Pona said the incident followed at least five occasions in which the priest tried to approach him sexually.
"During the movies he had his arm around me in a funny sort of way, sort of at the waist," Mr. Pona wrote in a teenager's cursive. "I pushed his arm back forcefully and said, "Don't, I'm not that type.'
Diocesan directories show that Father Forman, who did not return calls for comment, was moved only once in the last 20 years, in 1986, to the parish where he remains pastor. Mr. Pona's letter, in a sealed envelope, was placed in the priest's file, marked, "To be opened by archbishop only," according to court records.
Mr. Pona's lawsuit, filed against Father Forman and the archbishop, was dismissed because of the statute of limitations. But as the issue resurfaced in the news in January, Mr. Pona said, he went to see Bishop Michael J. Sheridan, who at first was compassionate but later phoned to say he had researched the case and found no evidence.
On Friday, Bishop Dolan said Mr. Pona's recent complaint might have gotten lost because it arrived shortly before Bishop Sheridan left for another assignment. Bishop Sheridan did not return several phone calls on Thursday. In the interview today, Bishop Dolan urged parishioners to "tell us again" if they were unhappy with how complaints had been handled.
The archdiocese's new strategy of removing priests based on substantiated accusations rather than assessment of future risk has already spawned criticism. Parishioners at St. Cronan's Church, where the pastor was removed on Wednesday, gathered that evening to pray for their priest.
"People are feeling that it's sort of an infringement of our Christian community to have someone taken from us without any consultation and without any explanation," said Bill Ramsey, a member of St. Cronan's. "I don't think anybody wants sexual abuse anywhere, but it's a fact of life and there are more constructive ways to deal with it than ordering people away from other people."
Belleville
Model System Still Falls Short
The church used to shuffle priests accused of sexually abusing children among the 127 parishes in the Belleville diocese, too.
In a 1995 lawsuit against Father Kownacki, one of the ousted priests, and the diocese, Gina Trimble Parks asserted that while she was the priest's teenage housekeeper, the priest repeatedly raped her over two years and ultimately fed her a quinine potion to bring about an abortion. Court records show Ms. Park's family made the same assertions to the bishop in 1973, and that Father Kownacki had two previous complaints of sexual abuse against him from other assignments. He was sent for treatment and later returned to a parish.
The lawsuit was dismissed because of the statute of limitations. "I was too old to fight it," he said of his ouster in a recent interview, adding that his family and friends "know the accusations aren't the truth."
The Rev. Clyde Grogan, longtime pastor of St. Patrick's in East St. Louis, said he brought several victims and their families to the chancery to register complaints in the 1960's and 1970's, and nothing happened.
"You know how it was handled?" asked Father Grogan, raising his hand and forming a zero with thumb and forefinger. When victims complained, he added, "The bishop would give lots of assurances. I think the strategy was, what do the people want to hear?"
That changed in 1993, after The Belleville News-Democrat published an article describing how a priest had molested high school boys aboard a houseboat on Carlyle Lake 20 years before. The accused priest was immediately removed and church leaders began rewriting their sexual abuse policy.
Four priests were ousted in the weeks that followed and eight more priests and a deacon were pushed out in the next two years as the diocese investigated a swell of complaints, most of which first appeared in The News- Democrat.One as eventually returned to a parish.
"We were kind of learning as we went," said Msgr. James E. Margason, Belleville's vicar general, who helped write the new policy. "We were damaging someone's reputation, we didn't know if the allegation was true. What drove us was to protect children."
Margie Mensen, a social worker who was the administrator of the Belleville review board from its formation until 1998, said a credible accusation from a victim was enough to remove a priest, often within days of the complaint. Many of the priests never presented their side to the board; only one admitted the abuse. Several refused treatment.
The diocese has since settled at least three of eight lawsuits (one is still pending in federal court) and paid for counseling for 49 people, including victims and their families. Though the state's attorney subpoenaed all the review board's records, it filed no charges, because the accusations were years old and lacked corroboration.
But if Belleville has been heralded as a model, many in the community remain dissatisfied with the process.
Father Grogan says the diocese's 80-some priests are still divided as to whether they believe the abuse accusations. Parishioners at one church wore yellow ribbons to protest their pastor's removal. Donations dipped for years as people feared the Sunday collection plate would go to defray legal expenses.
Those who say they are victims remain outraged that the priests retain their titles, salaries and pensions.
"That's kind of a slap in the church's face, my face, everybody's face," said Mary Aholt, whose husband was among those to receive a settlement. "Everybody that's paying their salary, and that's everyone that belongs to the Catholic Church."
Others worried that the church is not properly supervising the people it had deemed a problem. The Rev. Louis Peterson works in a restaurant in Lebanon, Ill. Father Kownacki collects coins and stamps in a dingy first-floor apartment in Dupo, Ill., where he said he sometimes celebrates Mass for family and friends, against the rules of his administrative leave. The Rev. David Crook has left the area.
"I have a whole new life," said the lounge singer at the Lincoln Jug Restaurant, Msgr. Joseph R. Schwaegel, who still faces a federal lawsuit, along with the diocese, by a California man who asserts that Father Schwaegel repeatedly touched his genitals and raped him in 1973, when the plaintiff was 8. Father Schwaegel declined to discuss the case.
The Rev. Robert Vonnahmen, a former camp director who faced at least three lawsuits accusing him of luring boys to his cabin for massages that led to molestations, runs a Catholic retreat center and a $3-million-a- year tax-exempt tour company, formerly owned by the church, which leads Catholic "pilgrimages" to dozens of destinations. (Two of the lawsuits were dismissed because of the statute of limitations, a third was settled out of court.)
At his office the other day, Father Vonnahmen wore a short-sleeved black shirt with Roman collar, button open, defying the church's sanction. He has denied all accusations against him, twice petitioned the Belleville review board to reinstate him and has now appealed his case to the Vatican. "I'm not going to give up on the Lord or the church, either one," he said. "I know these things happen occasionally. I can't imagine the large number of people in Belleville. There was a rush to judgment."
No Belleville priests have been removed since 1997. Monsignor Margason said the 800-number set up to receive abuse complaints has been silent for a year.
Vatican Weighs Reaction to Accusations of Molesting by Clergy
Source: New York Times, March 3, 2002
ROME, March 2 — Many Vatican officials, conservative and liberal alike, say it will take a sweeping reform of the priesthood to stop the pedophile scandals.
The liberals want better psychological screening and revamped training in seminaries.
The conservatives shift the focus elsewhere, saying that sexual abuse cases in the church mainly involve teenage boys, not young children, and for that reason they say the priesthood should become less welcoming to gays.
Priests who said this made clear they were not suggesting that gays were any more likely to be pedophiles. But they said most of the sex cases being investigated did not fit the classic definition of pedophilia.
With this in mind, Pope John Paul II's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, questioned whether ordinations of gays were even valid.
"People with these inclinations just cannot be ordained," Dr. Navarro-Valls said in an interview, citing canon law but wading into what he knew was sensitive territory.
"That does not imply a final judgment on people with homosexuality," added Dr. Navarro-Valls, a Spanish layman who is a psychiatrist by training. "But you cannot be in this field."
Dr. Navarro-Valls compared the situation of a gay man who becomes a priest to that of a gay man who marries a woman unaware of his orientation. Just as such a marriage can be annulled, considered invalid from the first, the ordination might similarly be invalid, he said.
Where Dr. Navarro-Valls and a number of conservative American priests differ is on the Vatican's handling of the sex scandals.
The Vatican response has been so low-key that a surprising number of the Vatican rank and file are still only dimly aware of the crisis in the American Catholic Church, these priests say.
For Americans here, the scandals back home have been Topic A for weeks. "Our bishops are in hysteria," one priest said. The law is "out the window, and suddenly it's like the French Revolution."
Still, he added: "Good will come out of it eventually. There will be bloodletting, but we are learning."
As big as the story is in the United States, "You certainly don't hear about it here among colleagues who are not American," said the Rev. Keith Pecklers, a Jesuit at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in Rome.
To the extent that others are aware of it, many tend to write it off as an American problem. So there is widespread unhappiness among Americans at the Vatican, even among conservatives who are usually the least inclined to criticize the hierarchy. On this issue, they say the response from Rome has been embarrassingly weak.
Several, none willing to be quoted, independently used the word disaster to describe both scandal and response, which they characterized as wait-and-see.
They say that approach is typical of a still Italian, largely Eurocentric church unaware of the gravity of the situation.
The pope's spokesman argued that point. "We're very well aware of the dimension and implications of the problem," Dr. Navarro-Valls said ruefully, "very well aware." Asked if there had been any discussion of the need to formally respond to the American scandals from here, he said: "Not for now. They're working on it there."
When the pope has something to say to one of his bishops or cardinals, Dr. Navarro- Valls said, he delivers the message directly and not through news releases.
Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who has been under pressure to resign over his handling of cases in the Boston archdiocese, came to Rome six weeks ago and met with the pope privately, Dr. Navarro-Valls said. Until recently, Cardinal Law was considered the Vatican's favorite American cardinal, but that is no longer the case, a number of officials said.
Dr. Navarro-Valls defended the pope's silence on the scandals by arguing that the pope had spoken "very explicitly" on the general topic of sex abuse by members of the clergy in a recent Vatican document.
But the way the pope communicated his apology to victims of abuse — in a paragraph deep inside a document about a bishops' conference of several years ago — was also cited as an indication that the church was not addressing the matter urgently.
Without criticizing the pope, people in church circles here express a frustration with the Vatican's inability to respond more quickly and less obscurely.
Another reason for the Vatican's muted response is that even now the standards for reporting and addressing accusations of sex abuse in the United States are seen as a model that the church would like to export to where such problems have been ignored. In Western Europe, for example, there are no treatment centers specifically for sexually abusive clergy members, and sex scandals of all kinds receive much less attention than they do in the United States.
The true intention of a recent move to centralize the way accusations of sex abuse against priests are handled, Vatican officials insist, is to bring the rest of the church up to American standards.
"Now when there's a problem it must be reported to the Vatican," Dr. Navarro-Valls said. "This is not going to be a substitute for any legal or criminal penalties but will be an additional guarantee, an acknowledgment of the seriousness of the problem."
The Holy See has thwarted American bishops who want to make it easier under canon law to dismiss predatory priests.
"Americans bishops want to be able to decide this on their own, administratively, rather than going through the judicial process" spelled out in church law, said one Italian canon lawyer at the Vatican. The judicial process can take years, whereas the administrative decision can be immediate.
He accused Americans of pushing for this change only because tort law in the United States exposes bishops to liability in a way that does not apply elsewhere.
"The painful thing is that it's all about money now," the Italian priest said.
Dr. Navarro-Valls said the pope had reacted with pain to the disclosures.
"He has shown tremendous sadness, a very physical sadness that affected his whole body and said, "How can this happen?' " Dr. Navarro-Valls said. "This has been my impression several times."
Ex-Priest in Child Abuse Case Sentenced to 9 to 10 Years
Source: New York Times, Feb. 22, 2002
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 21 — A priest whose sexual abuse of boys has ignited a scandal in the Roman Catholic church in Boston received the maximum sentence of 9 to 10 years today for fondling a 10-year- old in a swimming pool.
The defrocked priest, John J. Geoghan Jr., has been accused of molesting more than 130 children over 30 years in half a dozen parishes. Evidence that church officials badly mishandled his case had reached the highest echelons of the church hierarchy here, forcing Cardinal Bernard F. Law to apologize and fueling calls for his resignation.
In sentencing Mr. Geoghan (pronounced GAY-gan), Judge Sandra Hamlin of Superior Court in Middlesex County harshly criticized his actions. "This defendant hid behind his collar," Judge Hamlin said, calling Mr. Geoghan's behavior "reprehensible and depraved." She said his victims were helpless.
"They were unprotected," the judge added. "The defendant thought that no one would believe them."
Mr. Geoghan is one of about 24 priests to be sentenced to prison for abusing children, said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a support group.
"That certainly is among the more steep sentences," Mr. Clohessy said, adding that he was encouraged by "the increased willingness by prosecutors and judges to treat the church like any other institution."
Mr. Geoghan could be eligible for parole in six years.
Judge Hamlin ordered him to be placed on probation for life, facing strict monitoring. She sent Mr. Geoghan directly behind bars, even though Geoffrey Packard, his lawyer, intends to appeal. Mr. Packard said after the sentencing that it was difficult to say anything to mitigate his client's behavior, because "any explanation is looked upon as a justification or a rationalization."
He said the sentencing had stunned Mr. Geoghan. "He's just been sentenced to state prison," Mr. Packard said, "and he's 66 years old, and he's never been in an institution other than the Roman Catholic Church in his life."
The case has set off disclosures here and elsewhere about how the Catholic church has often handled pedophile priests, allowing them to remain in parishes, not reporting their activities to law enforcement authorities and settling victims' suits in secret.
Cardinal Law, the nation's senior Catholic leader, publicly apologized last month for letting Mr. Geoghan be reassigned to a parish even though he knew of the priest's long history of pedophilia. Documents released in civil suits by people who say Mr. Geoghan molested them suggest that church officials were more concerned with avoiding scandal than ensuring that he had no further contact with children.
Many of the archdiocese's two million Catholics have called for the cardinal to resign. Three times, he has explained why he would not step down.
In recent weeks, the archdiocese has given prosecutors the names of nearly 90 priests accused of molesting children. Nine of those were practicing. They have been suspended.
Other dioceses, including those in New Hampshire and Maine, have begun to give law enforcement officials the names of priests accused of molestation.
The sentence today, on a charge of indecent assault and battery, was striking, in part because it was given in a case that involved less severe accusations against Mr. Geoghan than those that have been made by dozens of boys, some of whom have said he raped them.
Mr. Geoghan's accuser in this case, now a 20-year-old college student, testified that in 1991, when he was 9 or 10, Mr. Geoghan offered to help him practice diving at a suburban Boys and Girls Club. The young man said Mr. Geoghan coached him for about 15 minutes and then squeezed his buttocks with his hand.
Mr. Packard, Mr. Geoghan's lawyer, pointed out in the trial that the witness did not remember the exact day, time or year of the incident and that some of his recollections differed from those of his mother.
Judge Hamlin said her sentence was not motivated by "the action or inactions of other priests or of the Roman Catholic Church." She said she made her decision based on this case, on Mr. Geoghan's admitted history of pedophilia and his attitude toward the accusations against him.
"There is no doubt the defendant is dangerous," Judge Hamlin said, adding that Mr. Geoghan should be severely punished because "he would use his office and his position as a Catholic priest to target" boys from broken homes. The judge said Mr. Geoghan, a small puckish-looking man who chatted with his sister and chuckled during much of the trial, showed "a total lack of concern for the damage his sexual molestation may have done."
The sentencing memorandum that prosecutors submitted to the judge includes a memorandum by Mr. Geoghan that offers a critique of an evaluation of him by doctors at an institute in 1995. The doctors wrote, "Father Geoghan has a long history of pedophilic behavior."
In his critique, Mr. Geoghan suggested that his behavior was somehow prompted by the fact that the children he encountered were "from dysfunctional families" who needed affection and, in some cases, were unable "to distinguish between normal and abnormal, good or bad, right or wrong."
The archdiocese has settled 50 civil suits against Mr. Geoghan and church officials for a total of $10 million. Some 84 civil suits against him and the church are pending, as are 2 other criminal trials.
The archdiocese issued a statement saying it was pleased by the sentence. "While we hope today's sentencing brings some measure of peace to victims, we also understand it cannot erase the tragic scarring many individuals have suffered," the statement said. "This case has helped trigger the comprehensive reform of the archdiocese's policies with regard to sexual misconduct by clergy."
For people who say Mr. Geoghan abused them, that could not be a better outcome.
"It's just a small first step in filtering out all pedophiles out of my church," said Patrick McSorley, 27, who said he was molested when he was 12 and Mr. Geoghan took him out for ice cream to comfort him after his father committed suicide. "He was never a priest. He's a predator."