Last snapshots of cases of Catholic Church transferring or moving priests accused of abuse

Last snapshots of priests accused of abuse

REV. ENRIQUE DIAZ JIMENEZ

A Colombian, Diaz pleaded guilty to sexually abusing three boys while a priest at St. Leo’s Church and Our Lady of Sorrows Church in New York in the mid-1980s.

Diaz was sentenced in April 1991 to five years’ probation and four months of an “intermittent sentence.” He was deported and resumed work as a priest in Venezuela.

He was suspended from the priesthood in 1996 for 20 years after 18 boys in Venezuela accused him of molesting them.

Monsignor Francisco de Guruceaga, the bishop who hired Diaz in Venezuela, said it was not clear to him when the priest arrived that he had been charged with abusing children. De Guruceaga said Diaz told him he had problems with relationships with women, not molesting children.

Diaz returned to Colombia in 1996 and found work again as a priest. Colombian prosecutors say Diaz was charged in 2001 with molesting one more boy and pleaded guilty later that year.

JOSE ANGEL ARREGUI ERANA

Arregui, a Spaniard, is a member of the Clerics of Saint Viator. He was convicted in Chile on March 24 possessing child pornography and was sentenced to no fewer than 817 days in prison, without access to computer equipment.

Arregui came to Chile in January 2008 and has been jailed since Aug. 14, 2009, when Chilean police determined that he had downloaded child pornography.

Police found he had stored more than 400 hours of child porn videos, including ones he made with a hidden camera in three schools in Spain. The Chileans concluded from the children’s accents that they were Spanish, and alerted Spanish authorities, who began their own investigation early last year.

Ignacio Pelaez Marques, a Madrid lawyer for the Saint Viator order, said Arregui left just because he wanted to teach in Chile. He was employed at Saint Thomas University in Santiago.

The lawyer said there were never any complaints about Arregui from students in Spain. The Saint Viator order also denied any knowledge of pedophilia, saying Arregui left by his own volition to teach in Chile.

BISHOP FRANCISCO JOSE COX

Cox had been bishop in La Serena, in northern Chile, for seven years when he was removed in 1997 amid rumors that he was a pedophile. He was first moved to Santiago, then Rome, then Colombia, and finally Germany.

In 2002, Santiago Archbishop Francisco Javier Erraruriz said Cox had agreed to be removed for “inappropriate conduct.” Erraruriz said Cox had shown “affection that was a bit exuberant,” especially toward children. The archbishop acknowledged the rumors, but said, “I’m not aware of any formal allegation backed by evidence and by someone willing to take responsibility.”

Erraruriz said Cox volunteered to be confined to a Schoenstatt convent in Colombia to continue “praying to God for his pardon for the errors he has made.”

Cox was given an administrative job in Santiago until 1999, then sent to Rome for psychiatric treatment, then in 2001 transferred to Colombia. He was later seen in Switzerland and then in a Schoenstatt sanctuary in Germany.

REV. JOSE ANDRES AGUIRRE OVALLE

Aguirre was sent out of Chile twice amid abuse allegations and eventually sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The judge determined that the church had been aware of abuse allegations as early as 1994. Cardinal Carlos Oviedo sent Aguirre to Honduras, where he worked at a girls’ school. A mother accused him of abusing her daughters, then 13 and 16. He left Chile the next day — Sept. 30, 2002, again for Honduras.

Santiago Archbishop Francisco Javier Erraruriz in 2002 defended the decision to send Aguirre to Honduras the first time.

“According to what I’ve learned, the preachers are always accompanied by someone, and the effect is very positive. … The response seems to have been adequate in terms of his recuperation. Only afterward, with time, could we see that they were insufficient.”

Erraruriz sent Aguirre a letter in Honduras ordering him to come back and face justice. He was convicted in July 2003 of sexual abuse of nine teenage girls and the statutory rape of another.

One of the girls, identified as Paula, was quoted by the Chilean La Nacion daily as saying “I thought it wasn’t that bad to have sex with him because when I told priests about it at confession, they just told me to pray and that was it.”

She said one of those she confessed to about her sex with Aguirre was Bishop Cox, who himself was facing allegations of pedophilia.

REV. NICOLAS AGUILAR RIVERA

In 1988 police began investigating reports that Rivera had molested children at two parishes in the archdiocese of Los Angeles — but Aguilar Rivera fled to his native Mexico before he could be arrested. U.S. authorities charged him in absentia with 19 felony counts for molesting 10 children and issued an arrest warrant.

Over the next 10 years, U.S. authorities sent repeated queries on the case to Mexico, but no action was taken.

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony wrote to then-Bishop Norberto Rivera to ask for assistance in apprehending the priest. In his reply, the Mexican bishop said he had told Mahony of the priest’s “homosexual problems” in a confidential letter before Aguilar Rivera joined the Los Angeles archdiocese. Mahony replied that he had not received the letter.

Once in Mexico, Aguilar Rivera continued to act as a priest at least until 1994, when he was accused of abusing a teenage boy as a priest at the San Antonio de la Huertas church in Mexico City.

Aguilar Rivera was laicized last year, according to Bishop Accountability, a church watchdog group.

REV. LUCAS ANTONIO GALVAN VALDEZ

In 1989 Galvan pleaded guilty in Colorado to sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl. Galvan had the girl clean the rectory and his private room and on several occasions fondled her in his room, according to the girl’s attorney, Alan Higbee.

Galvan pleaded guilty in March 1989 to third-degree sexual assault and was given a suspended one-year jail sentence in a deferred judgment in which the charge was later dismissed. The girl settled a lawsuit against the Pueblo diocese for more than $90,000.

In 1992 Galvan became a priest at San Cayetano Church in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and stayed for five years. He transferred to Mexico City in 1997, where he is now an assistant pastor at the Parroquia Nuestra Senora del Sagrado Corazon y San Cayetano.

REV. ELEUTERIO “AL” RAMOS

The diocese of Orange in Southern California received reports that the Rev. Eleuterio “Al” Ramos had abused children as early as 1975 and sent him for psychotherapy while allowing him to remain in ministry.

More allegations of abuse were reported in the late 1970s, and Ramos was eventually sent to St. Luke’s Institute in Maryland for about six months of treatment. Parishioners were told he was being treated for alcoholism.

Church officials transferred him to another parish upon his return, and he served in two more parishes between 1980 and 1985.

In 1985 Ramos called diocese officials to report that he had “slipped” and had an “incident” with a 17-year-old boy. Ramos assured his superiors that the parents were “not going legal.” Two months later, he was transferred to Divine Providence Church in the Diocese of Tijuana, Mexico.

The diocese of Orange provided Ramos with a car, paid him $332 a month and paid for car insurance valid in the United States. Ramos was to meet with his psychiatrist once a month and pay the $100 fee and obtain Mexican car insurance.

Ramos remained in Tijuana until at least 1993, when, according to an internal memo, diocese officials in California strongly urged Tijuana Bishop Emilio Berlie to remove him from active ministry, despite resistance from Berlie.

Ramos eventually returned to the U.S. and lived in a trailer in Whittier, Calif., before his death in 2004.

REV. JAMES TULLY

Tully, a member of the Xaverian Missionary Fathers order, served two stints in Sierra Leone, the second after being sentenced to probation in the U.S. in connection with charges of groping adolescent boys.

Tully first worked as a missionary in Sierra Leone between 1979 and 1985, according to sources who knew him in that African nation.

In 1991, in Franklin, Wis., Tully was accused of escorting three teenage boys to a baseball game, giving them alcohol and groping one of the youths. He pleaded no contest and was convicted of disorderly conduct in 1992.

He was sentenced to two years’ probation and barred from unsupervised contact with juveniles. He was transferred to the Institute of the Living for therapy in Hartford, Conn.

In 1994 Tully returned to Sierra Leone and remained there until a civil war forced him to be evacuated in 1998. He then returned to the U.S.

In 1998 William Nash told the Xaverians that Tully abused him while he was a 21-year-old student at the Xaverian Seminary in Milwaukee between 1986 and 1988. Nash received a $75,000 out-of-court settlement in 2005 from the Xaverians.

Soon after another alleged abuse victim in the Boston area came forward in 2002, Tully was moved from the U.S. to Rome and was assigned to a non-ministerial position. He was laicized in January 2009 and now lives in New Jersey.