Tenure One of Growth, Outreach, but Abuse Scandal Leaves Wounds
By Bruce Tomaso
Dallas Morning News [Dallas TX]
March 7, 2007
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/religion/stories/DN-grahmann_07met.ART.State.Edition2.440f497.html
Now that he's retired, Charles Grahmann, the outgoing Catholic bishop of Dallas, is looking forward to going fishing.
To show their gratitude for his long years of service to the diocese, many in his flock would gladly buy him a new rod and reel, and maybe a well-stocked tackle box.
Others would just as soon drive him to the lake this afternoon.
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| Bishop Charles Grahmann, leaving the sanctuary at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, oversaw growth of the Dallas Diocese to nearly 1 million. Photo by JIM MAHONEY/DMN |
Bishop Grahmann, who introduced his successor Tuesday, leaves a legacy in Dallas marked both by spectacular growth and spectacularly embarrassing scandal.
During his 16 ½ years as bishop, the number of Catholics in the nine-county diocese grew fivefold to almost 1 million. Many of the new arrivals have been Hispanics, and Bishop Grahmann, a son of German immigrants, is widely commended for his efforts to help minorities and the poor. He has been outspoken in his support of recent immigrants and in his criticism of those who would deal with them harshly.
The downtown Dallas cathedral, which has been restored under Bishop Grahmann, is a thriving church with almost 12,000 weekly worshippers, most of them Hispanic families.
"His heart is in his ministry to Latino Catholics, and it's always been there," said Sister Consuelo Tovar, senior organizer with Dallas Area Interfaith. She has known Bishop Grahmann since he was a priest and she was a nun in San Antonio in the 1970s.
"Bishop Grahmann's commitment to the immigrant community, especially those who are at the fringes of life in this country, speaks volumes about him."
The Rev. Gerald Britt, a vice president of Central Dallas Ministries, which serves the needy, echoed that.
"He has an obvious compassion for the least fortunate among his parishioners," he said.
"Caring for them isn't just theory with him. It isn't just a matter of theology or doctrinal stance. He has a real understanding of how important it is to apply the gospel of compassion."
At the same time, though, the Dallas diocese has been jolted by revelation after revelation of sexual abuse of children. Much of that abuse took place before Bishop Grahmann arrived, but much of it was concealed for years after he became bishop. Settlements with abuse victims exceed $45 million over the last decade, and lawsuits are pending.
"My opinion is that Bishop Grahmann just utterly failed to properly supervise and monitor these pedophiles," said Michael Pezzulli, a Dallas attorney who represented several victims of sexual abuse by lay day care workers at the Catholic Community of St. Pius X in East Dallas.
"He utterly failed to prohibit the abuse that occurred within the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. And I lay that failure directly at the feet of the bishop. When complaints were filed about priests and others conducting themselves inappropriately, nothing was done to them.
"Bishop Grahmann could have avoided a lot of suffering that occurred had he taken more direct, rapid and decisive action."
The bishop has long maintained that the molesters under his supervision – always a tiny minority – acted without his knowledge and that when he learned of their transgressions, he dealt with them swiftly and forcefully.
"In any kind of administration," he said Tuesday, "you always try to find out how you could sharpen awareness about everything, whether it is sexual abuse in your own ministry, and sharpen the awareness of other people about problems that exist in our society."
Even before sex abuse by priests became a national scandal for the Catholic church, Dallas was infamous for the 1997 civil trial of Rudolph "Rudy" Kos, a priest who molested altar boys in three parishes.
A Dallas County jury decided that Bishop Grahmann and others had been grossly negligent and had conspired to cover up the abuse. The jury awarded almost $120 million to 11 victims. Later, the diocese settled with the victims for about one-fourth of that amount.
Much of the Kos abuse occurred before Bishop Grahmann arrived in Dallas as bishop coadjutor in 1989. He became bishop the next year.
But in testimony in the Kos civil case, the bishop said he had never read the priest's personnel file – a file brimming with warnings. Mr. Kos, now defrocked and serving a life prison sentence, remained in ministry until 1992.
The Kos lawsuit uncovered evidence that other abusers had been allowed to remain in ministry as well.
In November 2002, The Dallas Morning News, in an editorial, called on Bishop Grahmann to resign for "the good of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas."
Publication of the editorial exacerbated tensions between the newspaper and the bishop's office – notwithstanding that James M. Moroney III, publisher of The News, is a lifelong Catholic who has donated extensively to Catholic causes, as did his father, the late James M. Moroney Jr., a former chairman of the newspaper's parent company. Bishop Grahmann was among those presiding at the Feb. 23 funeral Mass for the elder Mr. Moroney.
The editorial was not the first expression of dissatisfaction with the bishop.
In summer 1997, at the downtown Tower Club, an extraordinary meeting took place between Bishop Grahmann and a tiny group of prominent lay Catholics.
The laymen were clear: They wanted the bishop to go. According to the accounts of people present, as reported in The News in 2003, Bishop Grahmann at first agreed to resign, then changed his mind. The bishop and his spokesman, Bronson Havard, have steadfastly declined to comment on the meeting.
One of the organizers of the meeting was Wick Allison, publisher of D magazine.
Last summer, when Bishop Grahmann announced his intention to retire, Mr. Allison characterized the bishop's tenure as "a train wreck."
On Tuesday, however, the magazine publisher said he preferred to look forward. "Nil nisi bonum," he said, which is Latin for "say nothing but good."
Of the new bishop, Kevin Joseph Farrell, Mr. Allison said: "No bishop ever will have been welcomed with more open arms by all members of the Catholic community."
Staff writer Jeffrey Weiss contributed to this report.
E-mail: btomaso@dallasnews.com
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