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"You try to save a person's priesthood if possible," Steinbock testified in March, when asked why he had tried to reassign Don Kimball, who admitted to fondling six girls, rather than firing him. Steinbock's brief tenure, from 1987 to 1991, was clouded by failure to remove two offending priests, a history that would be detailed this year from a courtroom witness stand. Hurley died last year after undergoing surgery at a San Francisco hospital. Hurley, who resigned as Santa Rosa's longest-serving bishop in 1987, also testified that he tore up all confidential personnel records before leaving. "I think there's a danger in that and therefore, I have never reported anything on anybody to the police." "I've never gone to the police," Hurley said in a 1995 deposition. Santa Rosa's second bishop, Mark Hurley, ran the diocese from 1969 to 1987, a tenure marked by child molestations from Eureka to Santa Rosa but stifled by secrecy. It's only the latest in the long list of abuse, scandal and outright crime and deception that has marred the ministries of Bishops Mark Hurley, John Steinbock, G. Anthony Ross, currently suspended from his ministry to jail inmates for allegedly abusing an Illinois boy in 1981. That decision will affect the future of the Rev. Walsh said he supports the removal of current offenders, but hasn't decided whether the national policy should allow possible exemptions for one-time previous offenders. "You learn more from your mistakes," Walsh said, acknowledging that his intent was to "close the door" on mishandling of past cases. The proposal calls for prompt response to complaints, cooperation with police, formation of diocese-level investigative committees and the ouster of offending priests.īishop Daniel Walsh, who took over the 140,000-member Santa Rosa Diocese two years ago and who will be attending the conference, said Friday he already has instituted similar changes. The bishops will discuss a policy proposal for responding to sex abuse by clergy that repudiates past practices. "You've got certain dioceses that are magnets for problems. "All it takes is one bishop to not manage well and you've got a disaster," said Thomas Plante, author and psychology department chairman at Santa Clara University, a Jesuit college in the Silicon Valley. But critics and even church officials place much of the blame on the bishops themselves, whose secrecy and absolute power over diocesan affairs were a prescription for trouble. The nation's bishops will gather this week in Dallas as the Catholic Church struggles to staunch the suffering and loss. Catholic Church in 2002 played out in Santa Rosa, as bishops allowed priest offenders to remain in youth ministries, destroyed records of priest misconduct and provided hush money to victims. Over the course of the past three decades, the scandal rocking the U.S.
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In the eight years that followed, the Santa Rosa Diocese paid out millions of dollars to settle claims by victims of five priests, but never once did a priest, bishop or other church leader report any of the abuse to police. Shielded by a wall of church secrecy, Catholic priests molested youths from Eureka to Santa Rosa for more than 20 years before their abuses were revealed in lawsuits and criminal investigations starting in 1994.
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Bishops Concealed Sins of the Fathers, by Guy Kovner, Press Democrat,