By Tim Rohr
This started out as a short post to address the "correction," i.e. the thing Archbishop Jimenez is calling a "clarification." It's not a clarification of course, it's a correction to a very big error. But I got sidetracked on to the whole history of this thing. And while I've catalogued this history elsewhere (Orchestrated and High Drama in the AOA), both of those are multi-part and very long. So, in the interest of those not familiar with the backstory, here's the abridged version.
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Well there's much to say about this mess, but perhaps the first thing to say is "we told you so." Since Ryan Jimenez took on the mantle of Archbishop of Agana, we have been urging him to do something about what caused all of our problems in the first place: the "Jewish-Protestant heresy, as Bishop Athanasius Schneider terms it, that marched onto our island in 1995 and set up shop under the direction of the Nefarious Monk and his sponsor, the now de-frocked Fr. X. (I'm going to leave out some of the actual names.)
The history is long, complex, and dirty, but in short, Fr. X, going back to his seminary days, had the equivalent of a high school grudge against his better looking and brighter classmates. The grudge was aggravated in the early 90's when he was passed over for the honorific of "Monsignor" while his nemeses, and one nemesis in particular, received the title. Fr. X left in a huff under the guise of sabbatical, and while away, fell in with the Nefarious Monk who was a key operative in the aforesaid "Jewish-Protestant heresy."
Fr. X saw his opportunity. The Heresy Guys had money, power, and numbers. But Fr. X had something the Heresy Guys needed. You see, in order for the heresy to grow, they needed their own priests. The Heresy Guys had already gotten papal permission from the well-meaning JP2 to have their own seminaries, but they needed bishops to ordain their guys, especially the guys no other bishop wanted. And Fr. X had a bishop: Apuron. More specifically, Fr. X had the dirt on Apuron. The idea was to use that dirt to deal with Apuron. The deal was: You let us run your diocese, you give us a seminary, and you ordain who we tell you to, and we'll take care of you if ever that dirt of yours hits the fan.
But why did Fr. X need the Heresy Guys? Fr. X wanted to be the next Archbishop of Agana, not because he really wanted to be an archbishop, but because he didn't want "the other guy, his arch-nemesis, to get the job. It was all high-school stuff, and Fr. X would finally get his revenge for not getting picked first for the kickball team.
By 1995, Apuron had gotten away with his perversions for at least a couple of decades. It's not that nobody knew. In fact, it seemed that everybody knew. When I first relocated to Guam in 1987, it wasn't long until I heard the whispers, whispers I continued to hear for many years after, but always whispers with a knowing smile. In other words, Apuron's sexual perversions, as well as many other clerics, was just, well, you know, it was sort of like that uncle who you try to keep away from your daughters, but he still gets invited to all the family parties. In other words, it was known, but hey, "When's the next fiesta?"
However, at least from some of the other whispers I heard, Apuron was always aware that someday these ghosts of Agat Past, might surface, especially after that devastating run in with Walter Denton in Washington around 2000.
Walter was in the military and happened to be in Washington at the time. As I heard it from Walter, a party of local Guamanians was planned and Apuron would be in attendance. Walter heard about it and invited himself to the party. At the party, Apuron, in his usual near-papal regalia, was making the rounds and everyone was fawning over him and kissing his ring. But then he came to someone who didn't kiss his ring. It was Walter. Walter stared at him and said: "Archbishop do you remember me?" Apuron didn't. Then Walter told him his name and according to Walter, Apuron went as white as the regalia he was wearing.
For those who don't know, according to Walter, Apuron had sodomized him, raped him, when he was a 12 year-old altar boy at the Mt. Carmel parish in Agat, where then-Fr. Apuron, was pastor (ca. 1975).
Back to the Washington meeting, Apuron, per Walter, asked Walter to go for a walk with him. Walter agreed and, again per Walter, Apuron began crying and begging Walter to forgive him. From what I remember, Walter was moved to forgive him until Apuron offered him a picture of himself and a CD featuring Apuron singing, as a peace offering. Walter walked away and was silent for the next 15 years until this blog began giving clergy sex abuse victims a voice.
In the meanwhile, per my sources (there were many), Apuron had been lawyering up for years, both canonically and civilly. He knew the day of reckoning might one day come, and he knew he needed a Plan B. Thus, he was perfect prey for Fr. X, the Nefarious Monk, and the Heresy Guys. They would protect him so long as he would rubber stamp their projects. It worked well for a while, quite a while. And it might still be working except for an overreach by Apuron when he, at the orders of the Heresy Guys, began the campaign to clear out the parishes of Neo-resistant pastors, beginning with Fr. Paul Gofigan and Msgr. James Benavente. Additionally, Apuron had overreached by p-ssing off some key people on the finance committee when he told them to shut up and sit down when questions came up about the status of the then 75 Million Dollar seminary property.
There was some suspicious stuff going on with that property and Apuron was overreacting to normal questions good finance committee members are supposed to ask. Of course, we would eventually find out why Apuron was acting so strangely, he had already surreptitiously deeded the property to the control of the Heresy Guys. And why did he do that? The Heresy Guys were pretty bright crooks, and experienced too. They were no slouches. Their names read like the cast of The Sopranos...or The Godfather. They knew what was coming for Apuron one day, and they wanted to get that property, their seminary property, out from under the name of the Archbishop of Agana, a Corporation Sole. They knew that a lawsuit, like the one that eventually came, would cause that property to wind up in a legal settlement. So getting Apuron to deed it to them before anything like that happened was a smart move, a very smart move. But it had to be kept on the down low, and so it was. There was no announcement. Just a deed quietly filed with Department of Land Management on November 22, 2011.
Well, anyway, bottom line is the Heresy Guys waltzed right in here and took over. It was slow and quiet at first. But by 2008, things had gotten heated enough to prompt the first public protest ever against Apuron, and it happened on a day that the Cathedral was celebrating its jubilee, or something like that. There were visiting bishops who were in the procession which marched around in front of the cathedral directly across the street from the protestors who held very visible signs attacking Apuron. I saw Apuron's face as he walked by and knew trouble was coming. From that day he, Fr. X, the Nefarious Monk, and the Heresy Guys cranked their seminary into overdrive. Apuron was going to drive out every last one of the Neo-resistant priests.
By 2013 Apuron had enough of his Neo-priests ordained where he could make a major move. The first target was Fr. Paul Gofigan. In July 2013, Apuron and his Heresy Guys dragged Gofigan into the chancery and read him the riot act: "It is to your advantage to resign immediately rather than experience a more arduous and painful closure to your assignment..."
When I heard of these words, I knew they didn't come from Apuron, they came from the Heresy Guys. The Heresy Guys were writing the script and directing their rubber stamp puppet to perform. You can read all about it in Apuron vs Gofigan.
Next, they went after Msgr. James Benavente, who was then the rector of the cathedral. Same henchmen, same evil twins (David the Tall & Adrian the Small), same script: threats, public malignment, brutal, ugly, and pathetic given that this was our archbishop, the vicar general, and the chancellor doing this. But then again, they were just puppets of the Heresy Guys and the Nefarious Monk.
However, the news about Benavente woke up a sleeping monster in San Francisco by the name of John Toves. The story is too long to tell in this already long story (you can read it in Orchestrated), but John was the first to come out publicly and accuse Apuron of what everybody already knew. It took about another year. John didn't give up. And eventually John's shouting out Apuron's perverted history reached others. Then others. Then hundreds. And then bankruptcy.
So you see where this all started? I'm speaking to the current archbishop. Do you see why we have been quietly asking you to, at minimum, at least enforce the restrictions on this Jewish-Protestant heresy that your predecessor put in place?
The Heresy Guys will beat you just like they beat Byrnes. In fact they already are (beating you) given the mess over the Camacho thing. Bankruptcy. The loss of millions and millions of dollars. The loss of lands and other assets. All paid for by the faithful Catholics of this archdiocese and their ancestors. All of it, lost because Apuron let the Jewish-Protestant heresy in the door. Well, that's not entirely true. He let Satan in first.
More to come.
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