BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun
Retired Baltimore Archbishop William D. Borders was accused in two lawsuits yesterday of covering up charges of sexual abuse against a Catholic priest in his diocese while he was bishop of Orlando, Fla.
The lawsuits against the Diocese of Orlando, filed by two men in Florida's Orange County Circuit Court, allege that the Rev. Vernon F. Uhran sexually abused them at three Orlando-area churches and on a cross-country road trip in the early 1970s.
The unnamed plaintiffs, each seeking $5 million in damages, charge that Borders received reports of the abuse but did not discipline Uhran and concealed the information. The diocese transferred Uhran from parish to parish, "where he continued to have unfettered access to minors and was permitted to have frequent sleepovers in the Rectories," the lawsuits state.
Borders served as archbishop of Orlando from its creation in 1968 until 1974, and was archbishop of Baltimore from 1974 until retiring in 1989.