GUAM
Pacific Daily News
[with video]
Haidee V Eugenio , heugenio@guampdn.com November 10, 2016
Guam’s Catholic church leadership has known for decades about clergy sex abuses that happened as early as the 1950s, a retired priest said in a signed statement released Nov. 1. He said his only form of punishment for molesting at least 20 boys at the time was to say prayers.
Retired priest Louis Brouillard, now 95 and living in Minnesota, said his sexual contacts with children when he was on Guam were known to other priests, including Bishop Apollinaris Baumgartner, the highest Catholic leader on Guam from 1945 to 1970. Brouillard served as a priest on island from the late 1940s to 1981.
Brouillard said Baumgartner approached him to talk about the “situation.” Baumgartner, who died in 1970, is Guam’s first residential Catholic bishop.
“I was told to try to do better and say prayers as a penance,” Brouillard said. “I believe the Catholic Church should be honest and truthful regarding what happened on Guam during my time there.”
Brouillard made a video at his Pine City, Minnesota, residence and signed a written statement dated Oct. 3 in support of a former altar boy’s Nov. 1 lawsuit against him for allegedly sexually abusing him six decades ago.
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