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Thursday, April 4, 2002
Vatican sued in alleged cover-up

By Vickie Chachere
Associated Press
   Lawsuits claim church leaders helped to hide two child molesters
   ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Two men sued the Vatican and three Roman Catholic dioceses on Wednesday, accusing them of covering up sexual abuse at a Catholic boarding school in Florida and an Oregon monastery.
   The lawsuits claim that the Holy See, the archdioceses of Portland, Ore., and Chicago, the Diocese of St. Petersburg and two religious orders hid two abusive clergymen by moving them to parishes and monasteries across state and national lines.
   "Church leaders have been guilty of making deceitful choices," said attorney Jeffrey Anderson, who has represented more than 400 plaintiffs in abuse lawsuits against church officials since the 1980s.
   No one has successfully sued the Vatican in a sex abuse lawsuit, although a handful of lawyers have tried, said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a priest who co-authored a 1985 report warning more must be done to stop abuse.
   In the St. Petersburg case, Rick Gomez, 28, of California, said an unnamed Catholic brother abused him in 1987 when he was a seventh grader at the Mary Help of Christians boarding school in Tampa.
   In the Portland case, an unnamed man said the Rev. Andrew Ronan molested him in the mid-1960s in a Portland monastery and elsewhere when he was about 16.
   Ronan, who died about 10 years ago, allegedly abused children in Ireland before being transferred to the United States, the lawsuit said.
   The Chicago diocese was named because Ronan was transferred from a Chicago parish to Portland after allegedly molesting children, Anderson said.
   Last month, Anderson filed a lawsuit accusing all U.S. bishops and three dioceses of covering up sexual abuse by a former Florida priest more than 25 years ago.

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