Monsters & Critics
December 5, 2007
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/usa/news/article_1378653.php/Catholic_Cardinal_speaks_of_attack_ by_man_outraged_over_sex_abuse_scandals
Leading U.S. Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony was attacked on the street by a man outraged by the Church's sex abuse scandal just days after his Los Angeles diocese agreed to make a record payout to more than 500 victims, the Los Angeles Daily News reported on Tuesday.
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| Some of the new Cardinals during a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in Paolo VI's courtroom, Vatican City, 26 November 2007. Pope Benedict elevated 23 prelates from around the world to the rank of Cardinal at the weekend. Photo by Danilo Schiavella |
Mahony, 71, revealed the July attack at a recent conference of priests and said it gave him insight to the suffering endured by victims of an endemic sex scandal that plagues the entire Church worldwide, stemming from the forbidding of men and women serving the Church to marry or have any normal sexual relations.
According to reports, Mahony was dropping off letters at a mailbox near the downtown Los Angeles cathedral when the attack occured.
"Somebody recognized him and attacked him. It was shocking because it was an act of violence and it was someone we know and respect," a priest told the Los Angeles Daily News.
Mahony told the priests that the man began shouting profanities and knocked him to the ground. Allegedly it took a month to heal from the attack.
Mahony did not report the assault to police.
The Los Angeles Archdiocese, the largest in the United States, in July publicly apologized and finalized a record $660 million settlement to 508 local victims.
Mahony had come under particular fire from victims and their lawyers for blocking efforts in the courts to keep secret internal records of abuse and suspect priests.
News of the attack on Mahony was published a day after a former Catholic priest was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to molesting two teenage boys in the mid-1990s in the Los Angeles area.
Michael Stephen Baker, 59, is believed to have molested more than 20 young boys in his 26 years as a priest and had confessed his problem to Mahony in 1986.
Mahony, who was then a bishop, sent Baker away for treatment and later reassigned him to other parishes. Mahony publicly apologized in 2004 for mishandling the Baker case, which he described in a 2002 newspaper interview as the one "that troubles me the most."
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