THE US: The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has been dealt a new and devastating blow by revelations showing how out-of-control priests were dealt with in secret despite horrifying allegations on their diocesan files.
The fresh disclosures came to light in 2,200 pages of internal documents on eight priests, released by a Boston court on Tuesday to lawyers seeking to show that the church's mishandling of abusive priests was standard behaviour.
One priest in the Boston area, already the epicentre of America's crisis over abusive clergy, lured teenage girls, who were preparing to become nuns, into sexual acts by encouraging them to see him as Jesus Christ.
Another beat up his housekeeper twice, forcefully pulling out lumps of her hair, and allegedly threatened to kill the husband of a woman with whom he had a long-standing affair and whose son he abused.
A third priest, known as "pothead" for his drug abuse, allegedly supplied teenagers with cocaine, one as young as 15, and had sex with them, and a serial paedophile priest molested children for nine years undetected.
The files show that Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston wrote compassionate letters to some of the priests after they were exposed but there are no records of police being notified of crimes against minors.
In the case of the paedophile priest, Father Robert Burns, Cardinal Law applied to the Vatican to have him defrocked after he was sentenced in 1996 to three years for indecent assault of a child, saying that his "immoral and illegal activities" were the cause of grave scandal.
In this exchange with Rome, lawyers found a document from the Vatican explaining that the priority of the Vatican was to avoid scandal. The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments said that a "dismissed priest ought to live away from the places where his previous condition is known." However, this could be dispensed with "if it is foreseen that the presence of the supplicant will cause no scandal," according to a copy of the letter, dated May 25th, 1999, provided to The Irish Times by Ikon Document Services in Boston.
One victim of Burns described in testimony to a nun in 1999 how as a teenager he was sodomised by the priest, who threatened to tell his mother about a stolen soft drink if he did not keep quiet. His clerical records include the phrase, "Problem: little children".
Mr Roderick MacLeish, lawyer for 247 plaintiffs, said: "This is the first time we've seen actual Vatican documents referencing the importance of avoiding scandal when a priest is identified as a sexual perpetrator."
One of the most startling new allegations concerned abuse of novitiates by Father Robert Meffan. This priest regularly invited teenage girls studying to be nuns to his bedroom to undress for acts that included fondling and kissing of genitals, and allegedly once participated in sexual play with four girls at the same time.
He encouraged girls to "be brides of Christ" and to see him as "the second coming of Christ" to get them to engage in sexual acts.His behaviour is detailed in letters from Sister Catherine Mulkerrin in 1993 to a senior aide to Cardinal Law, the Rev John McCormack, now a bishop in New Hampshire.
Lawyers claim the documents show that Cardinal Law, after establishing regulations in 1993 to deal with abusive priests, still routinely transferred priests to other parishes, even after accusations of sexual abuse. Almost without exception, bishops working under Cardinal Law, who is under new pressure to resign, assisted in moving priests around.