COMMENTARY: The Backwash of the Sex Abuse Tidal Wave

c. 2004 Religion News Service (Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.) (UNDATED) In a remarkable example of follow-up journalism, the Dallas Morning News has broken a […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

(UNDATED) In a remarkable example of follow-up journalism, the Dallas Morning News has broken a story on a subject about which many Catholics prayed there would be no more news _ the sexual abuse of minors by priests.


The newspaper’s yearlong investigation of 200 cases of clergy sex abuse reports that almost half the priests involved were “runaways” who escaped the law by going to other countries. Furthermore, about “30 remain free in one country while facing ongoing criminal inquiries, arrest warrants or convictions in another. … Catholic leaders have used international transfers to thwart justice.”

Father Frank Klep, for example, a convicted child molester from Australia, was assigned to a college on Samoa, where the Dallas paper _ and you couldn’t make this up _ photographed him distributing candy to children after Mass.

Father Enrique Vasquez has been living classically “on the lam” since 1998 after fleeing his native Costa Rica the day before molestation charges were to be brought against him. He has since wandered the United States, Mexico and Honduras.

The 16,000-member order of the Salesians of Don Bosco allegedly shifted such accused child molesters as Klep and Vasquez on the vast chessboard of its worldwide postings. It now “categorically denies such behavior and condemns every kind of abuse of minors.”

Making it a trifecta of a bad day for this up until now highly esteemed order, the Salesian Cardinal Oscar Rodrigues of Honduras, who was in the running for pope, is accused of sheltering the infamous Vasquez. The paper was told that Rodrigues was too busy to be interviewed.

Leaving the country to avoid the police, the draft or bad publicity is practically an American tradition. New York’s “roaring ’20s” Mayor Jimmy Walker disappeared during a corruption investigation, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff decamped for Paris when there were questions she apparently did not want to answer, and, of course, director Roman Polanski left Hollywood after being accused of having sex with a minor, and wandered Europe until Hollywood, what the hell, found a way to honor him anyway.

The glaring spotlight has not, however, fallen on any American prelates or priests. And while I have heard it mentioned, one interpretation of this mess that can be safely excluded is conspiracy. Not on the part of church leaders, as some allege, to hide their shame or on the part of the media, as some allege, to add more lime to the public shame that the church _ especially its good people and good priests _ has already endured.


Church leaders have proven many times that meeting the demands of a conspiracy is beyond them. Currently, they cannot agree on how to put their foot into, or withdraw it from, the quicksand of making a policy on denying Communion to pro-choice Catholic legislators so they have decided to let each bishop make up his own mind about it. Catholicism is more a disorganized than an organized religion.

This notable series tells a terrible story, but it also allows us to glimpse the poignant human loss _ of life, of innocence, of illusions _ that is the true measure of the tragedy of this scandal.

DEA/PH END KENNEDY

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!