[See also other articles by Gustavo Arellano.]

Sorry we're late to the party, but G. Patrick Ziemann--a teacher at Mater Dei during the early 1970s who went on to become an auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles and head bishop at the Diocese of Santa Rosa before resigning in disgrace for screwing up its finances and screwing a fellow priest--died late last month.

Ziemann: Inflicted Hell, now receiving it...

Ziemann deserves a special spot in Hell, above Eleuterio Ramos but below founding Diocese of Orange Bishop William Johnson. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid out $2.8 million in civil claims alleging Ziemann molested three boys while a priest in the Los Angeles area, and Ziemann also allegedly molested an Orange County boy in a confessional booth during one of the many teen retreats he participated in during the 1990s.

But the real reason Ziemann deserves the lava treatment is Michael Harris, the notorious former Mater Dei and Santa Margarita High principal whom Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown has had to pay out millions for his boy-lover ways. From my long-ago article on the matter:

[In 2001], lawyers deposed [Ziemann] as part of a lawsuit against Harris by former Santa Margarita student Ryan DiMaria. During pretrial hearings, a seminarian revealed that in 1979 he complained to Ziemann--then at Our Lady Queen of Angels Seminary in Mission Hills--that Harris was molesting students at Mater Dei. Ziemann denied that such an exchange took place, but in a separate deposition for the trial, [former Orange bishop Norman] McFarland admitted knowing about the incident. When DiMaria's lawyer, [Newport Beach]-based John Manly, asked McFarland why he never pressed Ziemann on the matter, McFarland replied, "I simply don't recall calling him about that, and I don't know why I did not or should have or whatever."

Total pariah, right? So what did Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown do? Allow Ziemann's funeral services to be held at Orange's Holy Family Cathedral on Halloween!

Brown, for his part, didn't attend the hush-hush service, advertised publicly as a "private family gathering" but promoted among the pedo-apologist community on Facebook. But isn't it nice how His Excellency and his circle continue to make a mockery of their continued promises to no longer tolerate pedophilia and its corrosive influences?

"Ziemann was told about Harris' molestations and did absolutely nothing," says Manly, the famed lawyer who has represented many Harris victims. "All he had to do was pick up the phone, and the molestations could've been stopped. The fact that the diocese would allow a funeral at Holy Family just goes to show the complete arrogance, hubris and lack of remorse by Tod Brown, John Urell and the rest of the scumbags. It honestly is beyond belief that they would allow this. It's such an affront to the victims of Michael Harris to allow Ziemann to have a funeral given what he did here. It's sickening."

E-mail: GARELLANO@OCWEEKLY.COM