ROME
Crux
Cindy Wooden
February 15, 2017
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
ROME – Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, a church law expert and former head of the Vatican’s highest court, arrived in Guam Feb. 15 as the presiding judge in a church trial investigating allegations of sexual abuse leveled against Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron of Agana.
The Vatican press office confirmed a “tribunal of the first instance” was constituted by the Vatican Oct. 5 and its presiding judge is Cardinal Burke. Four other judges, all of whom are bishops, also were appointed, the press office said.
“When an action is in a ‘first instance’ court, that indicates that it is in the initial trial phase,” according to the website of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles accusations of clerical sexual abuse.
Three men have publicly accused Apuron of sexually abusing them when they were altar boys in the 1970s. The mother of a fourth man, now deceased, also accused the archbishop of abusing her son.
Apuron has refused to resign, but in late October, Pope Francis named former Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Michael J. Byrnes as coadjutor archbishop of Agana and gave him full authority to lead the archdiocese.
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