By Tim Rohr
This post at COMPLICIT CLERGY begins:
In late July 2018, a small group of Catholic laymen gathered to discuss the Theodore McCarrick sex scandal. A mix of emotions was in the room that day: sorrow, frustration, anger, disappointment and disgust. How was it that Theodore McCarrick had been allowed to abuse so many young men over multiple decades?
Read the full post here.
By the time this group met (I'll call it "the McCarrick Group"), we lay Catholics in Guam, beginning in 2013, had already dealt with a far larger and longer clergy sex abuse scandal, and the former Archbishop Apuron had already been found guilty and sentenced by the Vatican in March 2018. And, as I read through the post, it appeared that the McCarrick Group had taken a page right out of the Guam playbook.
Thinking that the McCarrick group had studied the Apuron situation in Guam is no mere fanciful thinking. Though McCarrick was a much bigger player in the Catholic world than Apuron, there is a connection between the two cases. And had the McCarrick scandal not exploded in Pope Francis' face when it did (August 2018), Apuron, despite having been found guilty and removed from Guam, might have regained his office and brought vengeance upon those of us who stood up to him.
Francis himself made the connection between McCarrick and Apuron during an interview on a flight from Ireland to Rome in August 2018. The McCarrick scandal had just blown up and the blow-up was further blown up by a scathing 11-page letter by Archbishop Vigano, former papal nuncio to the U.S., which named Francis and several other bishops as being complicit in a McCarrick cover up. (Note: One of the bishops named by Vigano was Cardinal Edwin O'Brien who personally threatened me in October 2016.)
Here is what Pope Francis said about Apuron during that interview:
The pontiff revealed that the last bishop to have been judged by such a process was Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron, who the Vatican announced in March had been found guilty of "certain of the accusations" against him, which included sexually abusing young men decades ago.
Noting that Apuron is appealing the verdict, the pope said that because it is a "very, very difficult case," he had decided to "take the appeal upon myself."
"I took it upon myself and I made a commission of canonists to help me," Francis explained, adding: "It is a complicated case on one hand, but also not difficult because the evidence is very clear."
"But I cannot prejudge," he said. "I'll wait for the information, and then I will judge."
These two very contrary statements by the Pope on such a serious matter - and public statements at that - pointed directly to the pressure he was under from what we call here in JungleWatch, "The Kikos," i.e. the Neocatechumenal Way leadership, who at that time, had significant influence with Francis via their "Red Pope," Cardinal Fernando Filoni.
Filoni's direct involvement to protect the neocats in Guam, and Apuron specifically, is too long to go into here and has already been demonstrated many times on this blog. Just type "Filoni" in the search bar at the top of this blog if you want to fill yourself in.
In short, though, Apuron's downfall in Guam was a severe blow to The Kiko's worldwide, and they knew it. Apuron, at the time, was the only bishop in the world who would ordain neocat presbyters upon command from The Kiko's. If Apuron fell, The Kiko empire - a very lucrative one - might soon follow. So upon Apuron's initial conviction and sentencing, The Kiko's, most likely via their "Red Pope," sprang into action to get Apuron's conviction overturned via an appeal.
Thus we see the strange convolution where Francis bypasses the normal course of appeals via the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and tells the reporters that he will "take the appeal upon myself." I mean, really? The pope is going to stop what he's doing for the rest of the Catholic world and focus on what to do with a single wayward bishop from an obscure diocese in the middle of Oceania?
Don't get me wrong. Guam is my chosen home and I want the best for it, but you see where I'm going? There had to be something else at play to cause the pope to take on Apuron's appeal himself when there was a canonical apparatus to otherwise handle it, and then for Francis to have it on his mind in the middle of the interview about McCarrick.
Per my experience, I knew exactly what was going on. The Kiko's had gotten to Francis via the Red Pope and Francis was being pressured to overturn Apuron's conviction - especially since Apuron maintained not only his innocence but also that he was the victim of a "real estate conspiracy" led by ME.
According to the church they allege he (Rohr) had a personal interest in the plan and was supposed to be involved in the multi-million dollar sale as a real estate mediator. - "Church says there's a plot to topple the archbishop," KUAM NEWS, June 3, 2016
Thus, the first order of business was TO DISCREDIT TIM ROHR. And they did that, or attempted to do that, by getting to certain persons close to me who then colluded with certain other persons close to Apuron, persons who were invested in seeing to my demise...and who were nicely rewarded afterwards, though, for some, those "rewards" are beginning to unravel. But that's a story for another day. (Meanwhile, pay attention to Kandit.)
And this is where McCarrick came to the rescue. Read the full news report and ask yourself why would Apuron's case be brought up in the middle of much larger world-shattering news like Cardinal McCarrick's case?"
Apuron was an outback-nobody, and McCarrick, as the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington DC for many years, was a kingmaker. So why did reporters bring up Apuron in the middle of their interview with Francis about McCarrick?
The answer is found in these words from the interview: "The pontiff revealed that the last bishop to have been judged by such a process was Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron..."
Apuron wasn't just the "last bishop to have been judged by such a process," he was also THE FIRST. I don't have time to link all the stories, but the main reason the Vatican hesitated in engaging Apuron was because it did not have a process for prosecuting bishops for sex abuse. It only knew what to do with priests.
This was big news at the time and the Vatican literally did not know what to do with Apuron. And it (The Vatican) would have probably ignored the whole matter (given Apuron's obscurity) had it not been for the FIFTY FOUR SUNDAYS that lay Catholics obstinately marched in front of the Agana Cathedral each and every Sunday during the symbolic 9:30am Mass and the ever present media coverage.
In the end, the pope denied Apuron's appeal. And I am very sure it was because the McCarrick scandal brought a spotlight to the Vatican and Francis was caught in the glare. Once that happened, Francis really had no choice but to be tough on Apuron. The whole world was watching. Otherwise, I think Apuron would have been exonerated by the pope and restored as Archbishop of Agana.
As it is, Apuron's sentence was quite light. He was not laicized as most priests are once found guilty of similar abuses. He remains a bishop though he cannot present himself as one. And more importantly, for the Kikos, he remains a priest, apparently in good standing, and most likely celebrates their "Eucharist" in their "small communities."
Meanwhile, I didn't make a dime on my so-called "real estate conspiracy."
However, we must remember that Apuron is not done. Aside from the archdiocesan cases, there are cases which name Apuron personally as a defendant. When those cases will be brought to trial, I don't know. But if and when they are, we can be sure that Apuron and his defenders will drag up the whole conspiracy story again. I'm looking forward to it. There are certain people I want to subpoena.
See also: SAVING APURON...THE REST OF THE STORY...FOR NOW (and the comments)
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