CALIFORNIA
Orange County Register
By DEEPA BHARATH / STAFF WRITER
When Monsignor Art Holquin was a student in the early 1970s at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, the rumors already were flying: Orange County, which was part of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, was going to become its own diocese.
Holquin, now 63, didn’t make much of it. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1974, and his first assignment was at the Holy Family Church in Orange.
On the morning of March 30, 1976, Holquin was by himself at the church, as the senior pastor was away in Oregon. The phone rang in the rectory. On the other end was a reporter for a Catholic weekly newspaper in San Diego.
“So, father, what do you think of the big news today from Rome?” he asked Holquin.
“What news?” the priest asked back.
It had just been announced in Rome that Orange County would become a separate diocese, the reporter informed him. …
SEXUAL ABUSE LAWSUITS
Though the diocese’s growth was exponential, there was also a period of turmoil when the nationwide Catholic Church sex abuse scandal erupted. Bishop Tod Brown, who took the helm in September 1998, faced the brunt of the sexual abuse lawsuits. The diocese was the first to arrive at a settlement, for $100 million, on Jan. 15, 2004.
Brown apologized to 87 alleged victims and issued a Covenant of the Faithful, promising to be transparent with the media and the public. However, Brown later was criticized for not divulging that he also had faced an allegation of sexual abuse. That allegation was dismissed by church officials. Brown said the accusation was not true.
Speaking recently from his office in the Christ Cathedral’s pastoral center, the retired bishop said he was “unaware of the problem” when he took office.
“The challenge for me was to come to grips with what it was and what we needed to do to get the healing started and protect our youth in the future,” Brown said. “(Sexual abuse) is a problem that is endemic to humanity. We had it in the Catholic Church, too.”
Settling the lawsuits “was the right thing to do,” he said.
“We’ve established protocols for employees and clergy, background checks, audits, everything we can do to prevent the abuse from happening again,” Brown said. “This is unfortunately a part of our legacy, and it’s something that should never be forgotten. The actions we take to prevent abuse is unending. It must be.”
John Manly, a Costa Mesa attorney who represented 50 sexual abuse victims in the county, said those victims and many Catholics are still bitter about the lack of accountability.
“What the diocese really did was hired a PR firm and did window dressing,” said Manly, raised Catholic and a 1982 graduate of Mater Dei Catholic School in Santa Ana.
“The main people responsible for it were never held accountable, and that taints the diocese forever. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles dumped predators here, and the Catholic children of Orange County paid the price.”
Manly said the diocese now has policies in place to protect children.
“But it’s better now because of the victims who came forward with their painful stories, not because of the goodwill of the diocese,” he said.
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