By Tim Rohr
10 bucks says it's Fr. Jason Granado. I don't have any documentation to support this analysis, but here's the scenario as I see it.
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Walter Denton, Roland Sondia, Roy Quintanilla and Doris Concepcion (for her deceased son Joseph Quinata) came forward with their accusations against then-Archbishop Anthony Apuron in May-June 2016.
A few months later, in or about September 2016, Fr. Jason Granado, a Guam-incardinated priest, was "loaned" to the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa, Saipan.
Granado was one of the "first fruits" of the former Guam Redemptoris Mater Seminary, and had served for a few years after his ordination in Guam parishes. Given the timing of his being shuttled off to Saipan - as the Apuron scandal exploded - some of us were suspicious of the move, especially given that Granado was a neocat and the use of the word "loan."
From a post on Facebook, February 21, 2024
Usually priests are "assigned," not "loaned." So there was a question - as there were many questions in those days - as to what was really going on. After all, by 2016 Guam Catholics had been bilked for millions of dollars for nearly a decade to fund what RMS proudly touted as "A Seminary for Guam." So why were we sending these very expensive guys away? (At the time 8 RMS priests had disappeared.)
I speculated that Apuron had no authority to assign a priest to another diocese, so the term "loan" was used. I wrote about it here. And as you can see from the above FB post, the archdiocese is still sticking to that story.
The blowup of Apuron's past came as no surprise to Apuron or the neocat generals. While I'm sure they hoped it would never happen, the ongoing clergy sex abuse apocalypse in the states was bound to reach Guam's shores at some point.
In fact, as we speculated numerous times in this blog, Apuron's willingness to welcome the neocats back in the mid-90's was probably motivated by Apuron's desire to have an escape hatch when his past ultimately came knocking.
And, as we further speculated, the price for Apuron's protection was subservience to the demands of the neocat generals, demands which included establishing a seminary and ordaining whoever they told him to ordain. Thus Guam became a dumping ground for guys other bishops wouldn't ordain.
I don't think Granado was one of them. He seemed to me to be following a genuine vocation and may have sought the priesthood, neo or not. Also, he wasn't authoritarian like his RMS buddies nor did he default to screwy stream-of-(un)consciousness sermons (again, like his buddies) - qualities, by the way, which make him a good candidate for bishop.
As set out in this blog many times, the path to power in Rome is a numbers game: the number of vocations, i.e. new priests.
This was the strategy of the now much-disgraced (and dead) Fr. Marcial Maciel and his Legionaries of Christ. Maciel is one of the Catholic Church's most notorious sexual perverts, but in his day, thanks to the number of new priests he was putting out, he was off-limits to any accusations or investigations because he enjoyed the personal protection of now-St. John Paul II.
Kiko and his generals understand this path to power. But given Kiko's weird theology - a Protestant-Jewish heresy as Bishop Athanasius Schneider has called it - Kiko and his pals have had to search out other pals who happened to be bishops to get their boys ordained.
Unfortunately, given the state of leadership in the Church over the last few decades, finding these "pals" has not been difficult, especially when they are wined and dined and plumed and swooned courtesy of the neocat black trash bags.
The neocats didn't need to work very hard to get Apuron. He was delivered on a platter by the faithless Adrian: the guy who brought the neocats to Guam after a self-imposed exile (i.e. a multi-year pout) after he was passed up for the title of "Monsignor."
Adrian knew Apuron's sordid history, and in hindsight, it's easy to speculate that Adrian - who had designs on being Apuron's successor - saw an opportunity to put Apuron over a barrel by leveraging neocat money, power, and intrigue.
In any event, Apuron became a rubber stamp and Adrian became the face of the Archdiocese of Agana, especially after John Toves showed up in 2014 and Apuron began hiding behind Adrian and Adrian's buddies (Edivaldo, et al).
The neocat generals weren't too concerned with losing Apuron as their rubber-ordination-stamp because the plan all along was to put the younger Adrian in Apuron's place. However, as Adrian was the backup plan to Apuron, if Adrian was now "the plan" and no longer the backup, the generals needed a new backup.
And this is where I think they put their heads together and came up with Granado, not as a future bishop for Guam, but Saipan.
By September 2016, Apuron had already run away and the Vatican had appointed Archbishop Hon to manage the mess that was now the Archdiocese of Agana. As we had been gunning for the close of RMS, and, by that time, had already outed the whole Certificate of Title Fiasco, the neocat brass, always with the long view, began considering a retreat and regrouping in Saipan.
The plan (in my view) was to infiltrate Saipan with a neocat presbyter, slowly gain the confidence of the bishop and the people, quietly move him up the line and have him in place for the right time, whereupon their guy would be appointed bishop and the neocats would have a new base of operations.
Meanwhile (again in my view), the idea was to massage Saipan Bishop Ryan Jimenez to at least be a neocat sympathizer, get him eventually moved to Guam, and then get Granado appointed chief shepherd of Saipan. And Voila!
As an aside, I think the neocats did not want Jimenez to join them like Apuron did. The neocats knew there would be major opposition in Guam to his appointment as bishop if Jimenez was a neocat. It would be easier to get Jimenez into Guam if he was not a neocat but still indebted to the neocat hierarchy for future uses.
All fantasy you say? Well we will see in a very short while, won't we. Saipan is "bishop-less," but not for long. And while I don't have "documents," to prove the above, I do have memories of my several private meetings with Archbishop Byrnes. It was clear to me during those meetings that Byrnes had been strategically placed in Guam, but not for long. And it turned out to be not for long.
The call to Byrnes to go to Guam came from our old friend Filoni. And before Byrnes came to Guam he was contacted both by Apuron and at least one of the neocat generals. I am quite sure that they didn't expect Byrnes to close the seminary. And after he did, things started to go downhill - very downhill - for Archbishop Byrnes.
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