CONNECTICUT
Hartford Courant
November 3, 2005
`Father Lou" Paturzo answered his door and led me to a couch in the lobby of his apartment building.
Three years ago, when complaints surfaced that he fondled two boys in the early 1970s, he said he'd spent nearly three decades in Hartford working with troubled kids toward some kind of redemption, toward forgiveness.
Tuesday night he started down the same path, talking about his work with former convicts. The Hartford Archdiocese had just announced its $22 million agreement to settle claims of sexual abuse by 14 priests, including Paturzo.
But I wasn't there for that. I knocked on his door for something else.
Do you remember Jim Hackett, I asked him?
Do you remember what you did to him?
Walk me through this, I asked. For all of us struggling to understand how men of the cloth can do this, walk me through the kind of mental gymnastics it takes to justify, to excuse, to explain, to live with their actions.