The coadjutor bishop of Guam has said that the island’s archbishop should not return to lead the diocese regardless of the outcome of a Vatican trial against him.
Coadjutor Archbishop Michael Byrnes said: “I think it would be a disaster if Archbishop Apuron were to return as the bishop of record.” There had been a wide loss of trust among the faithful, he said, and “widespread disarray” in Church operations.
Coadjutor Archbishop Byrnes, a former auxiliary bishop of Detroit, spoke to the press in Agana, the capital of the US territory of Guam, last week, offering an update of the canonical investigation and trial of Archbishop Apuron.
Cardinal Raymond Burke, a Church law expert and former head of the Vatican’s highest court, led a Vatican team to Guam in February to investigate allegations of sexual abuse levelled against Archbishop Apuron.
Three men have publicly accused the archbishop of sexually abusing them when they were altar boys in the 1970s. The mother of a fourth man, now deceased, also accused the archbishop of abusing her son.
Archbishop Byrnes said the Vatican trial was in its final phases. “In the next several weeks,” he said, three judges would convene at the Vatican to deliberate on the evidence gathered during the investigation, publish what the accusations were and then decide on a verdict of “not guilty, guilty or not proven”. The Vatican could release its decision by “the end of summer, early autumn”, or later.
Archbishop Byrnes said that even if his predecessor was found “not guilty” of any charges, it would be unwise to let him return to his previous role in Guam.
He said: “I’m convinced that this archdiocese will be unable to achieve peace until it is clear that Archbishop Apuron is no longer the bishop of record of this diocese. And I don’t say this on the basis of the trial, I say this on the basis of my experience here, what I have found in the last seven months [serving the Church in Guam].”
Police ‘broke up gay orgy in Vatican flat’, says newspaper
Police have raided a drug-fuelled gay sex party at a flat in the Vatican, according to an Italian newspaper report.
Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that police discovered an orgy when called to the residence last month by neighbours suspicious of a “steady stream of young men” seen entering the apartment in the former Sant’Uffizio Palace.
The flat was allegedly the home of Mgr Luigi Capozzi, secretary to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.
According to the newspaper, police found hard drugs in the flat. Mgr Capozzi is alleged to have been taken to a detox centre to recover from a drug overdose, and is now thought to be staying at a convent outside Rome. He has been replaced in his post of secretary to Cardinal Coccopalmerio.
Some reports say that Mgr Capozzi had been recommended for promotion to bishop by the cardinal.
The Vatican press office declined to comment on the story. Laura Signore, secretary to the commander of the Vatican police, Domenico Giani, told the National Catholic Register that the reports were “seriously lacking in truth”.
Pope’s spokesman dies aged 80
Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who spent 22 years as director of the Vatican press office, has died at the age of 80.
Greg Burke, current director of the press office, said his predecessor “always behaved like a Christian gentleman” and “embodied what Ernest Hemingway defined as courage: grace under pressure”.
Navarro-Valls, a doctor by training, was the first lay journalist to hold the position when St John Paul II appointed him in 1984.
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