Questions, as Always

Right—here’s the question. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about Roberto González Nieves, who occupies the position of Archbishop of San Juan. The archbishop has been subjected to an apostolic visit lasting over a year, which has resulted, according to the archbishop, in four charges.

1. Sheltering abusive priests
2. Conducting an investigation without authorization of Rev. Edward Santana
3. Supporting a legislative proposal that would give people living together certain rights re inheritance, hospital visitation, and medical coverage
4. Setting up an alter to the patria, which has a Puerto Rican flag but no American flag

In my post, I wondered where the press had gone off to. Why, if the highest religious leader on the island had come forward and announced that he was being investigated for shielding abusive priests, had the press done nothing more than report it? Why hadn’t anyone done some follow up, asked some questions, done a little legwork? Ever hear of investigative reporting, guys?

Then I went to New York, and read there that the archbishop had formed a coalition of a hundred religious groups called the Coalición en Defensa y Solidaridad con el Arzobispo de San Juan, or the Coalition for the Defense and Solidarity of the Archbishop of San Juan. Oh, and that he was celebrating his 14^th year as Archbishop in a very public mass, at which he invited all to come.

OK—I understand about a good offense being the best defense. And it may be, as the archbishop says, that this is all political, orchestrated by the ex-governor, who his critics charged was Opus Dei. Puerto Rico is perhaps the most political place in the world—not surprising for an island where the private sector is miniscule, and the public sector vast.

The next development? A piece in the largest newspaper, which could have been written by the archbishop’s press office. The charges are airily dismissed: the affair of the abusive priest is dismissed (Santana has left the priesthood, and the Vatican did authorize González to conduct an investigation); and if in over a year the apostolic visitor had been unable to dig up the dirt, isn’t it likely there was none to begin with?

Lastly, the writer makes the point: the archbishop is a good buddy of the new pope, Pope Francis. Clear implication—these charges are going anywhere.

OK—so did I wrong the archbishop, when I suggested that there was all a little something fishy about this business? Did I malign the press, when I suggested that they follow up an internet report that Santana had been shuffled off to the diocese of Miami? What is the real story?

I decided to look further into the priests who had been reported as abusive in Puerto Rico, according to a website called abusadoenpuertorico.com. Note—these are reported incidents only, nor is the website in any way official. So, sit down with the saltbox….

The website lists 14 reportedly abusive priests, with a bit more than 60 reports filed against them, from 2002 to 2012. As you would expect, most priests have only one or two reports filed against them—one or two have substantially more.

Of all the priests, one, Andrés Dávila Pérez, has 22 reports filed against him. Right—in the website Andrés Dávila Pérez is said to be in the archdiocese of Arecibo, a town to the west of San Juan. So where is Dávila Pérez now?

Perhaps in Mexico, if a website coming out of that nation, La senda, is to be trusted. Here’s what they have to say:

Uno de los invitados al encuentro fue el Padre Andrés Dávila Pérez, oriundo de Puerto Rico, y quien actualmente es vicario parroquial en la Arquidiócesis de Guadalajara; tiene 35 años de haber sido ordenado sacerdote, y 36 de pertenecer al Movimiento de Renovación, donde el Señor, así lo dice él mismo, lo enamoró y lo cautivó.

El presbítero puertorriqueño resaltó algo importante que, como bautizados, actualmente estamos viviendo: «El pueblo de Dios, los bautizados, estamos en crisis espiritual, de valores, nos falta identidad como pueblo de Dios». Y afirmó que es urgente contrarrestar esta crisis, es necesario que tengamos un encuentro personal con Cristo, para así tener identidad como hijos de Dios.

I include the second paragraph for its ironic content only—the real news is that “Andrés Dávila Pérez, a native of Puerto Rico, and who is now a parish priest in the Archdiocese of Guadalajara, has been an ordained priest for 35 years.”

I don’t know, of course, if this Andrés Dávila Pérez is our man. Significantly, the reports of abuse against Dávila Pérez are all from 2002 and 2003; the post from the website is from 2007. Equally, neither Andrés nor Dávila are particularly common names in Puerto Rico. Pérez, however, certainly is.    

Next up is the famed or infamous Edward Santana. Readers of this blog will remember reports that Santana had moved to the diocese of Miami—nothing, however, can be found on the church’s website of him. In fact, in half an hour of googling him, I can’t find a trace of him. Presumably, it was he whom El Nuevo Día reported as having left the priesthood.

Santana and Dávila Pérez between them account for over half the reports of sexual abuse. Right—so what about the other twelve guys? Let’s spend five minutes on each….

José Bermúdez—very little to be found, other than he was ordained in a ceremony led by the head of Opus Dei, Javier Echevarría. He had worked previously for the San Juan Star, an English-language newspaper on the island.

Juan Reyes Delgado—admitted guilt to lascivious acts in a trial in 2010, and was placed on the registry of sex offenders, according to one source.

Another priest, Juan Luis García, was sued in 2010 along with his bishop, INAKI MALLONA TXERTUDI, CP, the bishop of Arecibo. The suit claimed that Mallona knew of García’s abuse of an 9-year-old boy, Abraham Lebrón, but did nothing to stop it, instead choosing to move Garcia from parish to parish.

So it’s a mixed bag—with more questions than answers. Dávila Pérez certainly looks suspicious—but remember, these were reports only of sexual abuse. In his case, nothing was proved. The track goes cold with Bermúdez, Reyes Delgado, and García.

Which is to me a little suspicious. I have just looked up on Google five friends—all within the space of five minutes. Conversely, I have spent an hour investigating the five priests or ex-priests listed above, and come up empty handed.

Guys—where are you?

Santana Redux

OK, so the story keeps getting weirder.

Or not, who knows? Because curiously, the Reverend Edward Santana, who the Archbishop of San Juan is or is not investigating, is lying low, electronically speaking.

Which is to say that when you google “Edward Santana priest,” nothing much comes up. If you google “Edward Santana sacerdote,” you get an obscure website detailing the shenanigans about which I wrote yesterday.

There is, however, one interesting link in Google’s search results for “Edward Santana priest”: a blog called Annunciations by Michael Dubruiel. And I copy and paste the following post in its entirety.

 Behind the news

The priest mentioned in this CNN story is a former classmate of mine. What they don't mention is that he is Carlos Santana's cousin:

The church is investigating whether Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, who died in 1963 after dedicating his life to the church, was responsible for curing a person of gangrene; another of diabetes, respiratory failure and heart failure; and a third of skin cancer, said priest Edward Santana, who is heading the investigations for the church.

The first two alleged miracles occurred in Rome's Plaza San Pedro immediately after Rodriguez's beatification a year ago Monday. The third, in Puerto Rico, allegedly occurred two months ago, said Santana, of the diocese in Caguas where Rodriguez was from.

OK—you might not know, but Charlie Rodríguez is the only Puerto Rican to be beatified. Actually, he’s more than that. Here’s Wikipedia:

He is the first Puerto Rican, the first Caribbean-born layperson and the first layperson in the history of the United States to be beatified.

And he’s a big deal in Puerto Rican Catholic circles, the subject of great adoration. Evidently very devout, he worked hard to restore the liturgical customs that were becoming lost. He died at age 44 of cancer in 1963, and then, as anyone could have predicted, the miracles started coming. A woman with non-Hodgkin’s malignant lymphoma asked for Charlie’s intercession, and bing! Healed!

Then, there were the miracles as stated in blog post above. At any rate, on 29 April 2001, Pope John Paul II beatified Rodríguez.

Now then—two things about the blog post above. First, the link to the CNN story doesn’t work. Nor does going directly onto CNN and searching for Carlos Manuel Rodríguez seem to do anything.

The second thing? The post says, “What they don’t mention is he is Carlos Santana’s cousin.”

Carlos Santana?

Bloggers, bloggers—consider the historical record. Dammit, I’m dead sure that Michael Dubruiel meant Carlos Rodríguez, not Santana. But guess what? Dubruiel died and the grave’s a mighty silent place, as the poet has it.

Right—so all we have is conjecture. We have no idea where Santana is, and whether he’s working in the Catholic Church and still, perhaps, molesting kids. We don’t know who is whose cousin. Lastly, we don’t know if, assuming Santana is Rodríguez’s cousin, that had anything to do with the results of his investigation.

You know, I actually feel kind of bad, now and again, about the Catholic Church. There’s got to be good priests, honest clergy, devoted nuns, lay people who contribute much and receive little.

What there is not—and it pains me to say it—is an honest, morally respectable bureaucratic structure backing up whatever good people there are in the organization.

I’m gay; I’m an atheist. But I take no pleasure in seeing an organization two millennia old screw up so completely. I don’t benefit from a church in which no reasonable person could trust; the erosion of one more institution leaves us all poorer. Yes, I prefer to see the reality and not to be deluded.

But I wish the realty were not what I’m seeing…. 

One More Corrupt Archbishop

Why me?

Look guys, there are three major newspapers in Puerto Rico—El Nuevo Día, Primera Hora, and El Vocero. The first two are owned by the same company, but maintain separate staffs; the third is privately owned. All three have journalists, who are supposed to do stuff like sniff around, dig a bit of dirt, ask some questions, try and get some answers.

I, however, am not a journalist and know nothing about the profession, though I was exposed to many a breakfast / dinner rant by my father, who believed that the press was railroading Dick Nixon out of town. (Think the jury’s in on that…) So why do I have to step up to the plate? Isn’t that your job?

OK—here’s what I find seriously screwy. Two or three days ago, I reported that the archbishop of San Juan, Roberto González Nieves, had released a copy of a letter he had written to the Vatican. The letter expressed horror that he—González—had been viciously accused of four things, which he came right out and listed. They were:

1.     Protecting pedophile priests

2.     Investigating Reverend Edward Santana with no jurisdiction to do so

3.     Shared residences

4.     El Altar de la Patria

Right—I knew about the Altar, but what was the deal with the other three charges? I turned very trustingly to the press, and guess what?

You guys let me down.

Say whaaa?

We got the highest religious (stet) on the island coming out and saying that the Vatican is accusing him of protecting pedophile priests, and all you guys do is print the letter, state that González Nieves has said all he’s going to on the matter, shrug your shoulders and say, “yeah, whatever…?”

Guys—are you the church bulletin?

If not, maybe you should be making some calls, doing so digging, worrying about something other than—no idea who she is but I see her name all the time—Shakira.

All right, let’s do the unknowns in reverse order.

Despite what I initially thought about “shared residences,”—no, it doesn’t mean that González is living with anybody (though the rumor a decade ago was…OK, never mind). No, González came out in favor several years ago with a proposal that would make people living together under one roof eligible for three things: inheritance, hospital visitation rights, and inclusion in the medical plan of one of the partners. And no—it could be a straight couple or anybody, but the reality was that a whole lot of gay people would be, had it been approved, coming in the house por la cocina / through the kitchen (as we say down here)….

Right—so that was easy.

Now then, charges 2 and 1 are linked. But first, let’s do a little background.

González was born in 1950 in New Jersey, but went to school here in San Juan. He became a priest in 1977, worked in the Bronx until, in 1988, he was appointed auxiliary bishop for the See of Boston. Which at the time—and bells should definitely ring here—was under the head of Bernard Law.

Right—so you didn’t hear the bells. Let me spell it out—Law has cost the Catholic church tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in sex abuse payouts, and, though retired, he’s still very much in the church.

Right—so this morning at 3AM, when I woke craving jellybeans, I began to look up (OK, google) “González Nieves pederast priests.” And there’s nothing much there, except for one survivor network website that says, given Law’s heinous actions, that it wouldn’t be surprising if Gonzalez didn’t have some mud on his white Cossack (if that’s what it is)….

OK—brushed the teeth, went back to bed. And I resumed the search today, this time doing “Puerto Rico pedophile priests” or rather “sacerdotes pedófilos Puerto Rico” (always helps to know a little Spanish)…. And there I ran into a website encouraging, well, here’s a quote:

Aunque hay muchos obstáculos legales para poder procesar a los responsables del abuso, los abogados de Jeff Anderson & Associates están haciendo un llamado especial en Puerto Rico para los casos de abuso sexual cometidos por sacerdotes en la Isla, ya que este equipo de abogados ha trabajado por más de 25 años para superar estos obstáculos.  

Hey, Jeff Anderson up in Minnesota speaks Spanish, too! In fact, Avid Reader, we all ran into Anderson some time ago, when considering the curious case of Maciel, an old buddy of Benedict’s. So here is Anderson, making a special call for abuse victims in Puerto Rico to come forward, and saying his team of lawyers has more than 25 years of experience.

The real find came later, when I was invited to see a list of priests reported to have committed pedophilia, just by clicking, as you can, here: http://www.abusadoenpuertorico.com/Sacerdotes_Acusados.aspx

OK—do that, and I get the list of 14 clergy who have been accused of abuse. And one name in particular caught my eye: The Reverend Edward Santana.

Go back to the list of the four charges so wrongfully slung at the archbishop. Then put a checkmark next to number 2.

Right—some of the clergy have just one PDF file next to their name. Santana has 16. None of which are linked to an active file; I got this when clicking on each one of them:

404 - File or directory not found.

The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Right—so what would happen if I googled “Edward Santana sacerdote Puerto Rico?” Well, I come up with not much, and so I turn to a website with, perhaps, an axe to grind. Read it, in Spanish, with the box of salt in hand…

OK, here’s the report: Edward Santana was accused in 2001 before the archbishop of Caguas, a city in the center of the island. A mother charged Santana with sexual harassment of her daughter, and the church, reportedly, balked, saying there was no eyewitness. Eventually, however, the diocese offered a deal—a certain sum of money and the removal of Santana from his position, if the claimant would drop the matter. Allegedly, the diocese didn’t come through, and the claimant went up one level, asking the papal nuncio over in Santo Domingo to intervene. Apparently he did, though not before the news gets splashed over the front pages of the papers.

Now it gets murky—Primera Hora, in an article dated 18 May 2002, states that the Archbishop of Caguas had relieved Santana from his duties, and would be sending him off for rehab. Santana could, however, say mass and hear confession.

The website labuenaventurapr.com has a different, or perhaps fuller story. In this scenario, Santana—get ready—got transferred to Arecibo, where he was given a parish and was in contact with kids. Oh, and the goat that calmed the cup (la gota que colmó la copa)? The archbishop of Arecibo named Santana an ecclesiastical judge.

Things got hotter than usual, which is to say very hot indeed, and then the day came when Santana announced he had cancer; he had to go up to gringolandia for treatment. He did, remaining—allegedly—on the payroll.

Well, the sunny skies of Florida had a rejuvenating effect on Santana, and guess what! He’s now cured, connected with the Archdiocese of Miami, and also serving as…

…yes, yet again, an ecclesiastical judge.

Guys, I could call the archdiocese of Miami, or even just look it up.

But isn’t that your job?