BATON ROUGE (LA)
The Advocate
September 22, 2018
By John Simerman
When Louisiana’s five Catholic bishops met earlier this month in Lafayette for their regular quarterly meeting, there was no need to consult an agenda.
Since their last meeting, news had spread of the New Orleans archdiocese settling several claims of abuse involving a defrocked Metairie deacon, George Brignac, without the church following its own guidelines for publicly reporting it.
Then came the late July bombshell from a Pennsylvania grand jury, identifying what it said were credible allegations of abuse against more than 300 “predator priests” and involving more than 1,000 child victims across six of that state’s eight dioceses.
Bishops across the country have been scrambling to respond, with some deciding to release lists of clergy and other church officials who had been implicated in similar abuses over the years.
“It was the first thing on our minds: How can we respond to the questions coming at us from all directions? And rightfully so,” Bishop Michael Duca of the Diocese of Baton Rouge said Friday.
Duca echoed what New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond said Friday in an interview with The Advocate: that Louisiana’s bishops are now weighing if, when and how to release a similar list of names of clergy and others who have been the subjects of credible allegations of abuse.
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