IT APPEARS O'MALLEY DID NOTHING

By Tim Rohr

Pope Leo has appointed a new bishop to head the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. French bishop, Thibault Verny, will replace the now retired Cardinal Sean O’Malley. 

The Newsmax story notes that the commission under O’Malley “lost influence” and that O’Malley’s “crowning recommendation…went nowhere.”

Said “recommendation” was “the creation of a tribunal to judge bishops who covered up for predator priests.” 

This caught my eye.

One of the reasons the Vatican was slow to get involved in addressing Guam's "Apuron problem" back in 2016 when O'Malley was running the commission, was that while the Vatican was equipped to discipline "predator priests," it had no protocol for disciplining "predator bishops." 

Guam and the Apuron Scandal were unique in that regard, and the Vatican was left scrambling in 2016-2017 when those incessant picketers, mostly elderly, for 54 straight weeks, refused to lay down their signs and go away.

The distant but ever increasing thunder in Guam finally forced the Vatican to investigate Apuron and ultimately try him despite not having a canonical protocol, which means they probably threw one together ad hoc. 

It also means that had not "those lay people" taken matters into their own hands, the Vatican never would have gotten involved and Apuron would have remained the archbishop, at least until he was 75, the age all diocesan bishops are required to submit their resignation to the pope.

The canonical "ad hoc-ness" of the Apuron Affair became evident when Apuron appealed his guilty verdict and Pope Francis stepped in to handle it personally. 

At the time, Apuron filing an appeal didn't seem out of the ordinary. But in hindsight, especially with the recent news - which I'll get back to - Francis was probably advised to take on the appeal because if there wasn't a canonical protocol to handle Apuron's trial, there certainly was no protocol to handle his appeal.

I've written much about this before, but at the time, I and others were quite sure that the Neocat Generals were hard at work attempting to take advantage of this big hole in Canon Law to get their boy off the hook. 

And I think they would have succeeded if not for the untimely events relative to the McCarrick Scandal occurring (August 2018) just as Francis had taken on Apuron's appeal. In short, the McCarrick Scandal was so damaging to Francis that he had to look "tough on crime," so he threw Apuron under the bus. 

And that brings us back to the news and to why Cardinal O'Malley's "crowning recommendation" - a protocol for judging bishops - "went nowhere."

The Vatican action on Apuron (2017-2019) occurred smack dab in the middle of O'Malley's tenure (2014-2025). In fact, given the timing, it appears the Apuron Mess was probably the prompt for O'Malley to at least suggest doing something about bad bishops - even if his "recommendation" only dealt with bishops who covered for predator priests and for some reason skipped on addressing predator bishops.

So why - with the Apuron case right in front of both O'Malley and the pope - did O'Malley's "recommendation" go "nowhere?" And why, given O'Malley's high and powerful profile as the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston - and even considered "papabile" - did he "lose influence" - as the Newsmax story points out?

The common denominator

It's not hard to figure out when you step back and see the common denominator: THE NEOCATS. 

O'Malley was, and still is, a big promoter of the Neocatechumenal Way and especially its priest factory system: the Redemptoris Mater seminaries. 

A 2023 article, praises O'Malley for the significant growth of the NCW in the Boston Archdiocese: "There was only one Neocatechumenal Way community in the archdiocese when the cardinal arrived. Now, there are 52 communities in 11 parishes throughout the archdiocese."

In fact, O'Malley is openly campaigning for Neocat co-founder Carmen Hernandez' cause for sainthood. 

Just google "Cardinal Sean O'Malley Neocatechumenal Way" for lots more.

O'Malley's problem with advancing any agenda as head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is that the Neocatechumenal communities - as we well know in Guam - are a safe haven for the very "predator priests" and protector bishops O'Malley was tasked to take on.

Think of it. Who do you think has been supporting Apuron all these years? Where did Luis Camacho run to? And where is Wadeson? John Wadeson. All three of them - not to mention Adrian and others - ran away from Guam after being outed. 

We found Luis hiding in Qatar under the protection of a Neocat-friendly bishop. A friend of mine recently came across Wadeson in Hawaii - "ministering" to Neocat communities. And Apuron. We can be sure he is not only being well taken care of by the Neocats but is probably fully functioning as a bishop in those communities as well. And let's not forget who his attorney has been for 10 years. 

Oh and speaking of McCarrick, the worst of the worst, where did the finally disgraced Cardinal go after he was publicly outed? The Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Maryland.

Next to Cardinal Filoni, O'Malley was the Neocats' best friend in high office. So how was he going to push forward any sort of discipline for bishops when the one bishop in the world who needed to be disciplined was the one bishop who was - and still is - a Neocat: Apuron.

So, in the name of saving Neocats - and probably with plenty of "gentle pressure" from the Neocat Generals - it appears O'Malley did nothing.