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[Catholic Caucus] The Rehabilitation of Disgraced Cardinal Roger MahonySan Diego Bishop Robert McElroy was elevated to cardinal last weekend, a significant snub to Jose Gomez, the archbishop of Los Angeles, a much larger see than San Diego whose head typically receives a red hat. As if Gomez hadn’t been humiliated enough, McElroy chose Cardinal Roger Mahony, the disgraced former archbishop of Los Angeles, as one of the concelebrants at his first mass as cardinal. During the previous pontificate, Gomez had tried to sideline Mahony for his monstrous role in protecting molesting priests. Gomez said that Mahony would “no longer have...

Notorious Cardinal Mahony ResurfacesThe retired prelate who covered up abuse has resumed his left-wing lectures.Cardinal Roger Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, is notorious for his role in the Church’s abuse scandal. In 2013, he was “removed from all public duties by his successor, Archbishop José H. Gomez, as the church complied with a court order to release thousands of pages of internal documents that show how the cardinal shielded priests who sexually abused children,” reported the New York Times. “The documents, released as part of a record $660 million settlement in 2007 with the victims of abuse, are...

[Catholic Caucus] DC Archbishop Wilton Gregory's disgraced guest At the "installation" of Wilton Gregory as archbishop of Washington this afternoon, eyebrows were raised when disgraced Cardinal Roger Mahony was spotted near disgraced Cardinal Donald Wuerl in the sanctuary. Roger Mahony in 2011 while still archbishop of Los Angeles Tweeted by Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein, it is a telling sign of where the Archdiocese of Washington is headed.  Following his step down from public ministry in Los Angeles in 2013, at the request of Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, Mahony has been very selective on his public appearances. ...

The LA REC Is a Blueprint for Obliterating the Faith f one were looking for a front-row seat to comprehend the disarray that’s befallen the Catholic Church, one needn’t look far from the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress (“REC”), taking place this March 21–24 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Though the REC, sponsored by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is hailed as the largest annual convention of Catholics in the country, drawing nearly 40,000 Catholic educators and students each year, it provides a stark representation of the issues plaguing the Church — namely, the failure to handle the abuse crisis, heterodoxy, and the disintegration of the...

Pope Francis appointed disgraced Cardinal Roger Mahony to be his special envoy to the Catholic Diocese of Scranton’s 150th anniversary Mass. But after uproar, the diocese removed the announcement of Mahony’s visit from their website and told LifeSiteNews the cardinal informed them “late last week” that he’ll be unable to attend. On January 13, the Diocese of Scranton issued a press release saying, “Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Roger Michael Mahony, Archbishop Emeritus of Los Angeles, as his special envoy at the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the erection of the Diocese of Scranton, to be observed with a...

On Thursday, Pope Francis preached against scandal and harm caused by corrupt clergy when he concelebrated Mass with two cardinals. One of the cardinals was Roger Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles. A fair evaluation of Mahony’s ecclesiastical career would suggest, among other things, that he showed greater interest in fashionable causes than in the counter-cultural moral demands of the Catholic faith, that he conveyed a noticeably “thin” understanding of the Mass, that he had no qualms about showing ecclesiastical approval of pro-abortion politicians, and that at the very least he handled cases of sexual abuse extraordinarily badly, deliberately...

From the start of his tenure as the leader of L.A.'s Catholics, Roger Mahony had ambitious plans for the archdiocese. But clergy molestation claims were vying for his attention. A year after arriving in Los Angeles, the youngest archbishop in the U.S. Catholic Church had a schedule and an agenda befitting a presidential candidate. Roger Mahony raced around the city in a chauffeured sedan, exhorting labor leaders to support immigrant rights and rallying hundreds against a proposed prison in Boyle Heights. Where his predecessors had talked up praying the rosary, Mahony touted his positions on nuclear disarmament and Middle East...

A year after arriving in Los Angeles, the youngest archbishop in the U.S. Catholic Church had a schedule and an agenda befitting a presidential candidate. advertisement Roger Mahony raced around the city in a chauffeured sedan, exhorting labor leaders to support immigrant rights and rallying hundreds against a proposed prison in Boyle Heights. Where his predecessors had talked up praying the rosary, Mahony touted his positions on nuclear disarmament and Middle East peace, porn on cable TV and AIDS prevention. No issue seemed outside his purview: When an earthquake struck El Salvador, he cut a $100,000 check. When a 7-year-old...

President Obama said he expects Congress to introduce an immigration reform bill next month. The Los Angeles Archdiocese has played a key role in advocating for change. Before he was stripped of his duties for mishandling sex abuse cases, Cardinal Roger Mahony was a leading voice on immigration reform. snip Salas says that Mahony’s successor, Archbishop Jose Gomez, might not be speaking at rallies as much and certainly maintains a lower public profile, but he is very active in pushing for immigration reform. “I was in a meeting with President Obama a couple of weeks ago at the White House...

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony and a former priest have agreed to pay a total of nearly $10 million to settle four child sex abuse cases brought against them, lawyers for the victims said on Tuesday. Mahony, who retired in 2011 as head of the largest U.S. archdiocese and is now in Rome taking part in choosing a new pope, was accused of helping a confessed pedophile priest evade law enforcement by sending him out of state to a church-run treatment center, then placing the priest back in the Los Angeles ministry. As part of...

Q: Could you please comment on the assertions by Cardinal Mahony [of Los Angeles, California] that he is required to participate in the upcoming conclave? Many Catholics are grouping to protest his participation. –Douglas A: Douglas is referring to the highly publicized case of the Archbishop Emeritus of Los Angeles, Roger Cardinal Mahony, who is currently in Rome to participate in the conclave, now scheduled to begin on March 12. Unlike the other cardinal-electors, Cardinal Mahony’s presence here has unleashed a storm of criticism from Catholics around the world, who have been insisting that he should recuse himself from voting...

As archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger Mahony was famous for his petulance, dispatching angry letters to priests and others whom he considered insufficiently deferential. But now that he finds himself in a subordinate position as a retired and rebuked bishop he displays none of the deference he once demanded.No sooner had his successor stripped him of his diocese-wide “administrative” and “public” duties than the cardinal took to his “blog” to pout over the demotion through a snubbing letter. Hinting at a powerful faction of Los Angeles movers and shakers behind him while adopting a tone of passive-aggressive innocence, Cardinal Mahony...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cardinal Roger Mahony, who retired with a tainted career after dodging criminal charges over how he handled pedophile priests, was stripped of duties by his successor as a judge ordered confidential church personnel files released. The unprecedented move by Archbishop Jose Gomez came less than two weeks after other long-secret priest personnel records showed how Mahony worked with top aides to protect the Roman Catholic church from the engulfing scandal. One of those aides, Monsignor Thomas Curry stepped down Thursday as auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles archdiocese's Santa Barbara region. Gomez said Mahony, 76, would...

Hours after Cardinal Roger Mahony's successor announced that the retired LA prelate would "no longer have any administrative or public duties" in the nation's largest diocese after the release of damning sex-abuse files from early in Mahony's quarter-century tenure, it should come as little surprise that the "born fighter" wouldn't take Archbishop José Gomez's blockbuster move quietly. At 11.30am Pacific, the cardinal posted a letter he wrote to Gomez in response on his blog.  Dated today, below is the full text, with Mahony's preceding explanatory note. *    *    * Friends in Christ,This morning I sent this letter to Archbishop Jose...

The Archbishop of Los Angeles, Most Rev. José H. Gomez, has said “Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties.” See the pdf of the letter HERE.What this means is that His Eminence cannot be any sort of representative for the sitting Archbishop or for the Archdiocese. Canon law itself gives Cardinal some faculties. According to can. 357§2, “in those matters which pertain to their own person, cardinals living outside of Rome and outside their own diocese are exempt from the power of governance of the bishop of the...

Through his well-chronicled derelictions of duty, Roger Mahony, the cardinal emeritus of Los Angeles, placed a number of ticking time bombs near his successor's feet. Last week, one of them went off. Archbishop Jose Gomez, who replaced Mahony last year, announced that Los Angeles auxiliary bishop Gabino Zavala had submitted his resignation to the Vatican after fessing up about two children he fathered years before.The media fatuously describes this scandal as Archbishop Gomez's first "controversy." But it belongs entirely to his predecessor. Cardinal Mahony appointed Zavala to his position in 1994. Did Cardinal Mahony know about Zavala's children? (The Los...

DETROIT, Michgan, March 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Canon lawyer and Vatican legal consultant Edward Peters has countered one cardinal’s argument that publicly pro-abortion politicians should be granted communion because Jesus Christ gave Holy Communion to Judas Iscariot. Cardinal Roger Mahoney, archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, made the comparison in an interview with Los Angeles Times reporter Tim Rutten published March 9. Mahoney said that politicians shouldn’t be punished if they “aren’t able to act” on their Catholic principles and claimed, in Rutten’s words, that “canon law ... puts the responsibility for worthy receipt of the sacrament on the person approaching...

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez Los Angeles, Calif., Feb 28, 2011 / 02:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With the retirement of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez has taken over leadership of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the United States.“L.A. is home for me now,” the Mexican-born archbishop told the cardinal and the assembled worshipers at a Mass marking the transition of leadership on Feb. 27. “I pray that I will be worthy of continuing the work that you have begun here.” Before a crowd of 3,500 faithful at Los Angeles' Cathedral of Our Lady of...

As a 10 year-old boy working alongside Mexican workers in a Hollywood, Calif., poultry processing plant owned by his father, Cardinal Roger Mahony said he felt terrorized when the border patrol raided the business one day and intimidated workers with their guns. It was one of many experiences that made Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, the church's most outspoken advocate on behalf of immigration reform. Wednesday night he spoke about the issue to students, professors and fellow Catholics during a lecture at UNC Chapel Hill's FedEx Global Education Center. Stories such as the one he told might...

In a letter to parishes dated October 4-- the memorial of St. Francis of Assisi-- Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles will announce the formation of the Archdiocesan Creation Sustainability Ministry, according to the electronic newsletter of the Catholic Climate Covenant. “We exhort our faith communities and all our brothers and sisters to take the St. Francis Pledge, an initiative that urges Catholics nationwide to pray for, learn about, assess, act and advocate for populations affected by climate change, especially those that are most vulnerable,” Cardinal Mahony adds. “The St. Francis Pledge is a promise and a commitment by Catholic...