Thursday, March 23, 2023

HIGH DRAMA IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF AGANA - PART 11: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM & CONCLUSION

By Tim Rohr

CONTINUED FROM PART 10


To review. On May 17, 2016, Roy Quintanilla publicly accused Apuron of sexually molesting him. About ten days later, and before another accuser would come forward, Sen. Frank Blas, Jr. introduced Bill 326-33. The original bill sought to lift the civil statute of limitations on sex abuse of minors but only held persons liable and not institutions. 

There was probably a very good chance that Bill 326 would have passed with only personal liability because it was quite clear that Apuron's accusers, of which there would be four by mid-June 2016, first only wanted to confront Apuron privately, and failing that, sought only a legal path to hold Apuron accountable. 

Legislation cannot be aimed at a person specifically and Blas' bill did not name Apuron, but there was no doubt at the time about the aim of the bill and the intention of Apuron's accusers.

Also, by mid-June 2016, Apuron was threatening to sue his accusers. And if nothing else, they needed legal recourse should Apuron carry through on his threats.

Archdiocese plans to sue for 'malicious lies'

None of the initial accusers were asking for or were interested in money. Initially they just wanted to confront Apuron privately, share the wounds they had carried for decades, and maybe get an apology. And if no apology, at least the opportunity to confront the man who had tormented their memories for so long.

After the first accuser, Roy Quintanilla, came forward, it was immediately clear from the media coming from the chancery that not only would there be no private meeting with Apuron let alone an apology, but that Apuron intended to attack. 

Apuron's video response (and other videos coming from the chancery) the night of Roy's accusation created a public uproar and may well have been the motivation behind Blas' decision to introduce Bill 326-33.

Fast-forward to today when the Archdiocese of Agana is in bankruptcy and is being forced to sell or forfeit over 80 church properties, the real issue is how Blas' bill went from a bill only holding persons liable to a bill also holding institutions liable - which is what opened the door to bankrupting the Archdiocese, and which was never the intent of Apuron's accusers nor the Concerned Catholics of Guam nor any of many lay people who wanted to see justice for Apuron's victims. 

What happened is pretty much summed up in Bob Klitzkie's statement to the Pacific News Center after a public hearing on the amended version of Bill 326 which included institutional liability:

“This is what I thought would’ve been appropriate. Let’s go ahead and sue the abusers with their own personal money or whatever … but not the institution. And this is what I thought we could do,” says Klitzkie.  “The hierarchy and processes of the church would be sufficient to clean up the church so that child sexual abuse would become no more than a bad memory–so I thought. I was wrong.”

In other words, Klitzkie and most everyone else believed all we really needed was a law to hold persons liable for sex abuse of minors, and such a law "would be sufficient to clean up the church." So what went wrong?

It started on June 9, 2016, when newly-appointed Apostolic Administrator, Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai ("Hon") addressed the archdiocese at St. Anthony's Church in Tamuning. 

Hon failed to mention - even once - the crisis that brought him to Guam in the first place: the accusations against Apuron. Instead Hon's only message was that he was here (in Guam) "to restore unity and stability." 

For those of us who had gone before Hon's Inquisition in January 2015 - when he came to Guam as an "Apostolic Visitator" (an investigator), Hon's failure to mention the accusations against Apuron and his "restore unity" rhetoric reinforced what we saw in January 2015: that Hon was here to put down the rebellion. 

Given that Hon was Secretary to Cardinal Filoni and that Filoni was in cahoots with the Kiko's, it was even clearer that Hon was here to protect the Neocatechumenal Way generally and the Redemptoris Mater specifically. 

Note: Cardinal Filoni was then-Prefect for the (Vatican) Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, but more importantly, had been long since nicknamed "The Red Pope" because of the power he wielded in the Vatican as a Cardinal (thus "Red") which was thought to be equal to or even greater than Pope Francis. Perhaps this is why Francis got rid of him after the Apuron affair blew up and "exiled" Filoni to a position with a nice title but with no power in Rome. (I'll have more to say about this in a future post.)

It was later learned that Hon had gone off script at his June 9 address. Hon was supposed to address the accusations against Apuron but he chose not to. The omission was glaring, a real elephant in the room. 

Within days, "the rebellion," began pressuring the legislature to amend Bill 326 to include institutional liability to send a loud message to Hon, Filoni, and all the way to the Pope, that we meant business. 

As the amended bill was being readied for a public hearing, Hon announced that he had sent all the relevant documents related to the accusations against Apuron to the Vatican. 

Given the timing, just one day before the first of three public hearings on the amended Bill 326, it appeared that Hon was only now sending those documents - almost a month after he had arrived - in response to growing outrage to Hon's refusal to address the real crisis. 

David Sablan, president of Concerned Catholics of Guam, expressed this mounting frustration with Hon in a comment to the Pacific Daily News:

“That doesn’t tell us anything. OK, so he says that documents have been sent to Rome. So what? Walter Denton’s documents have been sent to Rome since August,” said Sablan. “It’s the same thing we’ve heard from Apuron, Father Quitugua and Father Adrian. We want transparency? Who is handling it? What issues can we expect? Where is Archbishop Apuron? The faithful need to have information. We don’t want more of the same things we’ve been getting, ever since we started bringing up these issues.”

Had Hon, on June 9, 2016, simply said that he was aware of the accusations against Apuron and that he intended to assist in a proper investigation, Bill 326 would have probably not only not been amended to include institutional liability but may never have passed even in its original form. 

The Catholic laity of Guam would have believed Hon and would have trusted that the matter was in good hands. At that point, interest, or at least public passion for, a legal remedy might have gone away because as Mr. Klitzkie said:

“The hierarchy and processes of the church would be sufficient to clean up the church so that child sexual abuse would become no more than a bad memory–so I thought."

But Hon was not here to get to the bottom of anything. He was here - on orders from his boss, Filoni, to put down the rebellion, protect Apuron, the Neocatechumenal Way, and the Redemptoris Mater Seminary. 

As already demonstrated in Part 9, Filoni's control of our archdiocese and everything we speculated about relative to Hon was exposed in September 2016 when the then-rector of the seminary, Msgr. David C. Quitugua, wrote to then-vicar general, Fr. Jeff San Nicolas:

This is to inform you that His Eminence, Fernando Cardinal Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, has been made aware of the pre announced  “visit" of the Laity Forward Movement to the Seminary. Cardinal Filoni’s instruction is that no such “visit” can be made to the Seminary…

Given that so many years have now passed since these events, and given the sad state of affairs the archdiocese now finds itself in, it's easy to forget how all of this came about and just blame the most obvious figures: Apuron's initial accusers, the Concerned Catholics of Guam, the picketers, myself, this blog, etc. 

But given the facts, there is no question who and what brought the Archdiocese of Agana down. And given Kiko's right hand man, Giussepe Gennarini's recent presence in Guam, one has to wonder if the Kiko's aren't circling the remains of the Archdiocese of Agana and organizing to scoop up former church properties. 

2 comments:

  1. Hey, Tim. Just in today...

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.catholicnewsagency.com/amp/news/253956/guam-archbishop-michael-j-byrnes-steps-down-for-medical-reasons

    Guess those egregious Neos finally ran him out of town this time...

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    1. Yes. They made him pay for closing their seminary. I, and others, tried to warn him several times about what they would do to him. He never should have been assigned here. He knew nothing of Guam or its problems. He was put here to be used. And so he was.

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