norberto rivera

Bron: Regnum Christie:
Como un gesto de fe y de la tradición de la Iglesia, el Card. Norberto Rivera pide la bendición sacerdotal de los nuevos sacerdotes.

A police report obtained through an unusual deposition of Mexico's most influential Roman Catholic clergyman casts doubt on his claim that he didn't know that a priest he had transferred to Los Angeles was suspected of pedophilia. The priest later fled Southern California after he was charged with sexually abusing eight boys.


Cardinal Norberto Rivera, who heads the Mexico City archdiocese, has testified that he didn't know the Rev. Nicolas Aguilar was suspected of sexually abusing children when he wrote a January 1987 letter of introduction for him to Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who was then archbishop.


But a 1986 police report found in a file at the offices of the diocese of Tehuacan, Mexico, where Rivera was bishop at the time, detailed allegations from parents that Aguilar had boys sleeping with him in the parish. The report was part of an investigation into Aguilar's brutal beating, possibly at the hands of a mob, a few days earlier.


Aguilar served in Los Angeles for less than a year before he fled to Mexico in January 1988 to escape what ultimately became 19 felony counts of sexual abuse of a child. He has never been tried on the charges, and his whereabouts are unknown.


The police report was among the documents filed last week in a California Superior Court in connection with a lawsuit that accuses Mahony and Rivera, two leading church figures, of conspiring to cover up Aguilar's actions in both countries. The lawsuit is one of roughly 500 cases against the Los Angeles archdiocese alleging abuse by priests. The archdiocese agreed in December to pay $60 million to accusers in 45 cases.


In a court filing last March, Rivera said he was unaware that Aguilar had exhibited predatory behavior toward children, though he did know that the priest was suspected of homosexuality with other adults. Rivera said he had signaled Mahony that Aguilar had problems through coded language in the letter of introduction.


Mahony, who heads the largest archdiocese in the U.S., acknowledged receiving the letter but said he didn't understand that it was coded. He said he never received a subsequent letter detailing allegations of homosexuality. U.S. lawyers went to Mexico City to question Rivera, whose lawyer said the cardinal had never seen the police report.