HIGH DRAMA IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF AGANA - PART 8: THE FIST PUMP

By Tim Rohr

CONTINUED FROM PART 7

Even though Archbishop Hon figures largely in this series, the object of this narrative isn't to personally disparage Hon. Hon was a pawn in a much larger Vatican chess game and he really had no idea of who the players were on the other side of the board, i.e. the lay people of the Archdiocese of Agana. How Hon was a pawn, though not quite an innocent one, will be demonstrated as this series unfolds.  

Also, the object of this series is not to retell the history of all that happened in this archdiocese between July of 2013, when Apuron ambushed Fr. Paul Gofigan, * and the coming forth - three years later - of the original Apuron accusers. That's all been told in the previous series ORCHESTRATED.

* "It is to your advantage to resign immediately, rather than experience a more arduous and painful closure to your assignment at Santa Barbara Church." - Apuron letter to Gofigan, July 16, 2013. The full story of Apuron v Gofigan has its own series here.

The object of this series (however long it may be since the matter is still ongoing) is to get to the bottom of who is REALLY responsible for the bankruptcy of the Archdiocese of Agana and the loss of so many properties given to the Church by so many trusting lay Catholics over many decades - who only gave out of love for their Catholic Faith and not to this or that cleric.

Not to get to the bottom of this and to hold it up in plain sight is to put a bandaid on cancer, a cancer which is still very much here...and waiting.

The focus in this series is on Hon because Hon was the Apostolic Administrator at the time the whole clergy sex abuse thing blew up from a single accusation from one guy, Roy Quintanilla, who hadn't lived in Guam in decades, into a a full blown legislative process that lifted the civil statute of limitation on sex crimes against minors and opened the door for what became the bankruptcy of the Archdiocese of Agana.

The amazing parts of this story are at the beginning and the end.

Roy had only wanted to privately speak with Apuron about his alleged abuse, which means this whole tragedy never had to go beyond a 30 minute meeting between Roy and Apuron. And in the end, there were solid legal arguments that could have been made before the federal court, but weren't, that would have protected parish properties. See the post: Note to Parishioners

In other words, none of this needed to happen. But it did. So let's review how it happened in order to keep our finger on the real perps - and I'm not even referring to the guilty clerics.

*****

After John Toves was run off "The Hill" (aka The Chancery) and threatened with police action by the now ex-Fr. Adrian Cristobal in December 2014, it became insufferably clear that Apuron and his people meant to crush anyone and everyone with the same "arduous and painful" experience that Apuron had threatened Gofigan with in 2013 - not to mention the public burning of Msgr. James Benavente on a public media stake the following year.

Still, after Roy Quintanilla, Walter Denton, and Roland Sondia, Apuron's initial accusers - in the wake of The Toves Apocalypse - had confidentially made their stories known to myself and a very few others who these three cautiously came to trust, all three were adamant about not going public and reiterated their desire to simply meet personally with Apuron and share their stories and grief with him in the hopes of getting an apology and an offer to quietly reconcile.

But then The Diana became a factor. The Diana was (and may still be) a Neocat blog run by the pseudonymous "Diana." Since the Gofigan thing, The Diana had been attacking anyone and everyone who brought the smallest question up about the Neocatechumenal Way or Archbishop Apuron, and The Toves Apocalypse had been fresh meat for Diana.

It's not that we cared about The Diana or anything she said, but it became very clear that The Diana was really just the mouth of the same puppet masters who were pulling Apuron's strings, and we knew exactly where those strings led: first to a renegade monk name Pius and then to his bosses in the Neocat hierarchy - whom shall be revealed in due course.

*****

Given the ramped up attacks from The Diana, by May of 2016, it had become clear that the only way for Roy, Walter, and Roland to confront Apuron would have to be publicly. 

There was no law at the time which would permit Apuron's accusers to sue him. So Apuron could have just blown it off as false accusations and there would have been nothing these three men could have done about it. Apuron could have gone on ruling happily ever after, as he had done for three decades. 

A decision was made by those us who were helping Roy, Walter, and Roland to not bring all three men forward at once. The idea was to give Apuron a chance to respond to Roy and for Roy to have a chance to do what he wanted to do from the beginning: just sit down with Apuron. Had Apuron handled the matter this way, it might have all been over before it began.

But he (Apuron) didn't.

 Roy came forward publicly on May 17, 2016. 

Apuron immediately went on the attack. Some of it was downright comical if not sad. Apuron's handlers staged a video report featuring Deacon Frank Tenorio who had been at the Agat parish where Roy alleged he had been abused in the 1970's. 

Tenorio swore on screen to Apuron's innocence but unfortunately the guy who staged the video, a certain Fr. Edivaldo, via his silhouette, was seen pacing behind Tenorio and then fist-pumping on the video Edivaldo sent to the media. Then after fist-pump was featured on this blog, Edivaldo edited out the fist pump and sent it to the media again. 

If there was a chance that Apuron could be believed, it was pretty much destroyed by the Tenorio video and the Edivaldo fist-pump. It was clear that the inmates were running the asylum. 

Meanwhile, it appears that Apuron, after making his own video earlier that evening protesting his innocence, had hopped a plane to Rome, because one, Apuron disappeared from public view in Guam after May 17, and two, Apuron showed up in a series of photos taken by a Vatican photographer during a public meet and greet with the pope on May 26, 2016:

 

Normally, the pope greets visiting bishops during his weekly public audiences and the usual niceties are exchanged. But the pics of Apuron and the pope in this series are very different. Apuron appears very distressed, and so does the pope. 

Apparently Apuron was hoping to rally the pope to his defense before things got out of hand in Guam, but crashing a papal greeting line is a very strange way to do it. It's quite obvious Apuron was in grave distress. 

But the question is "why?" 

There had only been one accusation from one guy who hadn't live in Guam in 40 years. Why would that send Apuron running to Rome to crash a papal greeting line - unless of course Apuron knew what was coming.

TO BE CONTINUED-PART 8