"Porter Confessed to Pope: Ex-North priest told Vatican of abuse in 1973", Staff and Wire Reports, The Sun Chronicle, May 16, 2002.
""NORTH ATTLEBORO, Massachusetts -- Former North Attleboro priest James Porter told Pope Paul VI in 1973 that he had been sexually molesting children, nearly 20 years before victims stepped forward to reveal the abuse they had suffered.
Porter's confession is among newly released records which show that Catholic church officials -- including the late Cardinal Humberto Medeiros -- knew of child molestation allegations against Porter as far back as the 1960s. The court document is among hundreds of pages obtained by the Boston Herald and reported today.
Porter's personnel file included a 17-page letter he wrote to Pope Paul VI in which he asked to be removed from the priesthood. The file was forwarded to the Vatican in 1973.
In the letter addressed to `Most Holy Father,' Porter, who was a priest at St. Mary's Church in North Attleboro during the early 1960s, recounts that Fall River Bishop James Connolly knew he had been caught molesting a boy, and Connolly sent him home to be with his family until the scandal died down.
" 'A short time later Bishop Connolly gave me another chance and assigned me to Sacred Heart Parish in Fall River', Porter wrote. 'I can't recollect much about my stay there except after a short time I again fell into the same situation that plagued me in North Attleboro'."
Porter has admitted to molesting at least 50 children while he was a priest in the Diocese of Fall River in the 1960's. He pleaded guilty to molesting 28 children in 1993 after victims formed a group in 1992 and detailed the abuse against them."
This information is simply and totally unbelievable! Let us review these terrible revelations again, one by one:
1. Tortured Pedophile priest, James Porter, wrote a 17-page letter to "His Holiness", Pope Paul VI, completely confessing his sexual molestation and rape of children. Porter then asked to be relieved of his duties, undoubtedly because he did not want to continue his compulsive sexual abuse!
2. "His Holiness", Pope Paul VI, did nothing! He took no action. He did not care about the plight of the poor innocent children one little bit.
3. The only action recorded was that the Bishop moved Porter to the Fall River Diocese, where Porter proceeded to molest and rape 50 more children over the years he was serving there!
4. Not only did Pope Paul VI know that Porter was raping children, but so did Fall River Bishop James Connolly and the late Cardinal Humberto Medeiros! Yet, not one of them ever, ever contacted the police. Not one of them ever took the common sense step of reassigning "Father" Porter so he could not have access to children.
How could JP not know what was going on with the settlements that were being dished out?
http://www.post-gazette.com/world/20...ests0324p1.asp
For years, as some U.S. bishops asked Rome to help them remove offenders from ministry, Vatican officials viewed child molestation as "an American problem," said Nicholas Cafardi, a canon and civil lawyer who is dean of the Duquesne University School of Law.
Bishop Joseph Adamec of Altoona-Johnstown is one of a handful of bishops to have forcibly laicized a priest.
But because he was able to send Rome all of the documentation from the civil trial of the Rev. Francis Luddy. whose molestation of an altar boy brought a $2.6 million judgment against the diocese, he did not have to conduct a lengthy church trial in Altoona, which would otherwise have been required.
http://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/a010ht.htm
It indirectly implied that the American document was very rigorous against the abuser-priests. Here is the text of Cardinal Re"s letter: "Deeply moved by the suffering of the victims and their families, the Holy See supports the American Bishops in their endeavor to respond firmly to the sexual misdeeds of the very small number of those who minister or labor in the service of the Church.
But such a very small number cannot overshadow "the immense spiritual, human and social good that the vast majority of priests and religious in the United States have done and are still doing" (John Paul II, April 23, 2002)" (Vatican Internet Site).
Pedophile Priest Sentenced
