MICHIGAN/GUAM
The Detroit News
Nicholas G. Hahn III, The Detroit News November 20, 2016
Some Catholics may think their church’s sex abuse crisis has subsided since the Boston Globe’s sensational 2002 reports.
They would be wrong.
Many of the allegations typically reach rectories of local parishes. Rarely do victims accuse archbishops of sexual abuse.
When altar boys in the Archdiocese of Agaña, Guam named Archbishop Anthony Apuron as their abuser during the 1960s and 1970s, the Vatican sent a temporary apostolic administrator to the Pacific island archdiocese.
Apuron has denied the allegations and, despite calls for him to be removed, refuses to retire five years ahead of schedule.
But Pope Francis won’t wait for an official investigation to conclude. Detroit’s own auxiliary Bishop Michael Byrnes was recently tapped as the archdiocese’s coadjutor bishop, and will take over all administrative and pastoral duties.
“There are a lot of challenges and troubles,” Byrnes recently told me, “but it’s not like they’re unfamiliar to Detroit.”
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