An American cardinal who was accused of covering up cases of sexual abuse by priests and was later stripped of some duties, is set to play an official role in the ceremonies surrounding Pope Francis’ funeral.
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, will participate in the closing of the pope’s casket at St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday evening and in his burial at the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore on Saturday, according to Vatican announcements.
The cardinals taking part were chosen based on seniority, a spokesman for the Vatican, Matteo Bruni, said at a news briefing on Thursday.
Cardinal Mahony, 89, was the archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 until his retirement from the Roman Catholic Church in 2011. In 2013, internal church personnel files released as part of a civil case revealed that Cardinal Mahony had played a role in covering up cases of sexual abuse by priests.
The documents show that Cardinal Mahony and others worked to protect abusive priests from punishment and withhold evidence of sexual abuse from law enforcement agencies. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the United States, also sent priests who had molested children out of state for treatment, in part because therapists in California were legally obligated to report evidence of child abuse to the police, according to the documents.
In 2007, the Los Angeles archdiocese agreed to pay $660 million to settle claims from more than 500 victims, the largest settlement for priest sexual abuse at the time. Last year, the church agreed to pay another $880 million to settle abuse claims from 1,353 people.
Advocates for abuse victims assailed the decision to allow Cardinal Mahony to take part in the papal funeral.
“By having Cardinal Mahony ceremonially close Pope Francis’s casket, the Catholic Church has chosen to let a known enabler of abuse perform one last act of cover-up,” Peter Isely, a founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement.
“Honoring him in this way makes it clear: Nothing has fundamentally changed under Francis’ papacy,” he added.
As archbishop, Cardinal Mahony was one of the most powerful men in the American church, known as a savvy politician, a relatively progressive prelate and a champion of Hispanic immigrants.
When the church files were released, Cardinal Mahony apologized to victims and said he had been naïve about the effectiveness of “treatments” for abusers and the impact of the crimes on those they had harmed.
“Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God’s grace finally helped me to understand,” he wrote on his personal blog after the files were released. “I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility. Rather, I am being called to something deeper — to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many. I was not ready for this challenge.”
Cardinal Mahony’s successor, Archbishop José H. Gomez, disciplined him, a highly unusual move for the church at the time. The archdiocese said that Cardinal Mahony had been stripped of his official duties and would no longer speak publicly on behalf of the church, although he was still allowed to celebrate Mass.
Weeks after he was disciplined, when Pope Benedict XVI stepped down, Cardinal Mahony traveled to Rome to take part in the selection of the next pontiff, rebuffing calls from victims’ rights groups to recuse himself from the election. That conclave selected Francis, who as pope pledged “zero tolerance” for sexual abusers in the church and took measures to address the issue, although critics argued he did not go far enough.
In recent years, Cardinal Mahony has spoken out on political issues. He denounced President Trump’s plan for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and criticized efforts within the church to deny communion to Catholic lawmakers who support abortion rights.
Cardinal Mahony cannot participate in the election for Francis’ successor, as prelates over the age of 80 are not eligible in the voting.
