Del. Bishop Stands by 3 Aides

By Randall Chase
Delmarva Now
February 25, 2012

http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20120224/NEWS01/120224032

[letter from Bishop Malooly]

[Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up in the Diocese of Wilmington via BishopAccountability.org]

The bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington is rejecting calls from victims of priest sex abuse for the resignations of three top-ranking church officials.

Bishop Francis Malooly said in a letter to the diocese Friday that none of the three clerics “engineered a strategy to conceal priest sex abuse.”

He also said Monsignors Thomas Cini, Clement Lemon and Joseph Rebman never put children at risk by placing an abusive priest back in ministry, but instead implemented a zero-tolerance approach implemented in the mid-1980s.

But Lemon did not bar the Rev. Gerard Smit from ministry in until 1996, even though documents suggest that officials knew in 1987 of an incident involving Smit and a child in Louisiana and noted that they should proceed with caution in allowing him to minister.