NEW JERSEY
The Record
MONDAY AUGUST 19, 2013
BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
A defiant Newark archbishop lashed out at critics in a letter to Catholic clergy, defending his handling of an alleged pedophile priest and denouncing the media, victims’ advocates and politicians as “evil” for distorting his record.
John J. Myers distributed the letter in response to press accounts that detailed a 2010 deposition in which he denied knowing about a priest’s alleged sexual abuses while he was bishop of an Illinois diocese. But during Myers’ time as bishop in Peoria, the diocese received an allegation that the priest had molested a child and that no action was taken, according to records made public in the settlement.
In the letter, which Myers urged priests to share with churchgoers, the archbishop declared that anyone who claims that he had “no effective part” in protecting children from abuse is “simply evil, wrong, immoral and seemingly focused on their own self-aggrandizement.”
“God only knows their personal reasons and agenda,” the archbishop wrote. “We are still called to love them. And God will surely address them in due time.”
Francis Fiorenza, professor of Catholic Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, said he has never seen such a strongly worded statement from a bishop. Many Roman Catholic prelates have gone on the defensive during the decades-long sex-abuse scandal, but Myers may be the first to cast their critics and the media as sinners, he said.
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