Article Title
Breaking ranks: why Boston’s cardinal intervened in an abuse case in New York
Link to Article: https://catholicherald.co.uk/magazine/breaking-ranks-why-bostons-cardinal-intervened-in-an-abuse-case-in-new-york/
Source: Catholic Herald
Author(s): J. Arthur Bloom
Date: January 10, 2019
Synopsis of / Excerpts from Article
On December 20, 2018 the New York Times ran a story (written by Sharon Otterman) describing a situation in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, wherein Donald Timone, a priest on whose account the Archdiocese paid two child sexual abuse settlements, has been openly exercising the faculties of his ministry (saying mass in public, hearing confessions, teaching at a university, and serving as a counselor for Catholics with same-sex attraction, encouraging them to refrain from acting on their homosexual urges).
On 21 December 2018, Sean O’Malley (a.k.a. Archbishop of Boston and “Cardinal”) dispatched a letter to Christophe Pierre (a.k.a. the Papal Nuncio, or pope’s ambassador to the United States) in Washington D.C., calling his attention to Otterman’s New York Times article of the 20th, regarding Timone. In his letter O’Malley disclosed that he himself had received correspondence from someone in New York. In O’Malley’s letter to Pierre, the name of O’Malley’s New York correspondent is redacted. O’Malley in Boston wrote the following to Pierre in Washington: “I note the seriousness of the allegations [redacted] presents with regard to Rev Timone and that today the New York Times has published an extensive report concerning the allegations against Rev Timone.”
According to the Catholic Herald article:
Timone had been allowed to remain in ministry despite several settlements with people who had accused him of sexual misconduct. Church-watchers quickly concluded that O’Malley was, in effect, reporting New York archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan to the nuncio.
One can safely assume that the nuncio does not need someone to read The New York Times for him, and this was more about O’Malley going on the record (at least to insiders) with his disapproval of the handling of cases in New York. Yet there is also what one might call a second track to this story. The main story is the Times report and the response to it, which revealed the settlements and questioned why the priest had been allowed to remain in ministry, and O’Malley’s decision to intervene. The second track, which played out in the Catholic press, concerns a small Catholic college trying to get a straight answer about Fr [“Father”] Timone.
Here is the timeline of events: on December 13, administrators at John Paul the Great University in California received a letter of suitability for Fr Timone from the Archdiocese of New York, sent on December 4. Then, on December 20, the New York Times broke the news about ongoing investigations into Fr Timone, prompting the college to seek clarification from the Archdiocese of New York. On December 21, Cardinal O’Malley sent a letter to the papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre. Fr Timone was removed from ministry.
According to Ed Condon at the Catholic News Agency, Fr Timone had taught on a yearly basis at the school for a decade. Suitability letters were sent every year, as is required of priests operating outside the diocese in which they are incardinated. Fr Timone had previously been investigated in 2002 and 2003. So the archdiocese did not disclose that Fr Timone was under investigation in any of the suitability letters it sent to the college. Officials at John Paul the Great evidently felt betrayed and spoke to reporters.