Raúl Vera is the Mexican bishop who holds the record for death threats. He has survived more than one attempt on his life, and his work in favor of missing persons, immigrants, children and juveniles, indigenous populations, prostitutes and pariahs of all types has earned him the undying hatred of many, including the drug rings.
Yet the threats seem to leave no mark on him. An engineer by trade and an intellectual son of May 1968, the 69-year-old Dominican friar has forged himself a legend as an untamed soul.
His first test came in 1995 when Juan Pablo II sent him to Chiapas in the middle of the Zapatista effervescence. His mission: to bring order to the diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas, which was then headed by the charismatic Samuel Ruiz, a champion of liberation theology and supporter of pro-indigenous theories. But the man who was supposed to wrest power away from the unruly Ruiz and return the diocese to the path of conservatism ended up supporting the local clergy instead.
Rome never forgot. As punishment, four years later Vera was transferred to Saltillo, in the arid northern state of Coahuila. It was to no avail. Vera returned to the trenches, facing up to the government and to the fearsome drug cartel of Los Zetas.
Meanwhile, his charged rhetoric against inequality and “liberal capitalism” has distanced him from the rest of Mexico’s bishops, who are aristocratic and wed to orthodoxy.
For a long time, Raúl Vera was the Catholic Church’s black sheep, the old-fashioned left-winger. But that was until the ideological earthquake represented by the new pope, Francis I, gave renewed relevance to his words. Now, other bishops are suddenly turning to Vera for guidance.
Question. What visits would you recommend to the Pope when he comes to Mexico?
Answer. To begin with, he should become familiar with the migrants’ route. I would also make him visit a prison, because he likes going to prisons. I would also take him to the outskirts of a large city, because he says we should go to the periphery. I would organize a visit on the basis of what he is asking us to do. And I would make sure that the poor and the indigenous were standing in the front row, because that is something that doesn’t usually get done.
Q. Not long ago you baptized the daughter of a lesbian couple. What do you think about homosexuality?
The true meaning of life lies in the community, in caring for the weak”
A. That is a topic that we have refused to address. The people who say homosexuals are sick are sick themselves. The Church needs to come to them not with condemnation, but with dialogue. We cannot cancel out a person’s richness just because of his or her sexual preference. That is sick, that is heartless, that is lacking common sense.
Q. Is it not the same with abortion?
A. I share the Church’s views on abortion, and see it as murder. The difference lies in how you penalize it. Abortion, just like same-sex marriage, has served us subterfuge to tell ourselves that we in the Church have our morals. It is very easy to go against a woman who has an abortion, it poses no trouble and we have support from the ultraconservative right. When there was a national campaign against abortion here, I organized rosary recitations to reflect on the defense of the lives of migrants, miners and women as well as the unborn. But we are hypocrites. It would seem that the only moral rules deal with condemning same-sex couples and abortions. You do that and you’re the perfect Christian.
Q. Would you make prostitution legal?
A. No, that would be legalizing female exploitation. I believe in the dignity of women. Prostitutes are extremely damaged women, but they must never lose their dignity and their right to be respected. We are reaching horrible extremes in connection with trafficking and exploitation.
Q. You have confronted the drug cartels in public. Do you fear for your life?
I learned that in order to defend human life, you have to put your own life on the line”
A. In Chiapas I learned that you have to risk your life if you want to stand on the side of the poor. I learned that in order to defend human life, you have to put your own life on the line. There is no other way to be a shepherd.
Q. Mexico officially has more than 13,000 missing persons. In two northern villages, the drug rings took away 300 people in full daylight within the space of days, and authorities did nothing about it. What is happening?
A. Impunity is allowing this to happen. Disappearances come with the elimination of all evidence that might aid persecution of the crimes. First the people disappear, then their bodies.
Q. Would legalizing drugs be a solution?
A. That will not be a solution.
Q. Why not?
A. Absolutely not. Drugs go hand in hand with the depreciation of human life. The decomposition of man does not come from drugs; man turns to drugs, like he turns to alcohol, for other reasons. To some, life has no meaning and they need drugs to find that meaning. Others have no other place to go. Legalizing drugs will not solve the problem of why people use drugs in the first place.
Q. Are you a Socialist?
A. I do not consider myself a Socialist. I have not read Marx, I was not an activist, and I never liked the theory of conversion into a dictatorship. We all have the same rights and the same dignity, but we also have freedom. Yet I have never supported the methods of capitalism. The true meaning of life lies in the community, in caring for the weak and sharing equally in the bounty of the land. All of this I learned from the indigenous world, from the poor and the peasants. They taught me the value of human life and shared their capacity to feel joy. They taught me how to laugh.
Faced with tough questions under oath last month, former Twin Cities archbishop Harry Flynn said at least 134 times that he could not remember how he handled clergy sexual abuse cases during his 13-year tenure, according to documents made public Wednesday.
Flynn, 81, retired six years ago. He said he didn’t have dementia or other diagnosed memory problems. “I think it has more to do with age than anything,” he said, although he noted that he has been diagnosed with cancer, pneumonia and Legionnaires’ disease.
The former archbishop said he did not report any accusations of child sexual abuse to police and doesn’t recall asking anyone else to report abuse claims, either, according to a transcript of the May 14 deposition released by victims’ attorneys. Flynn claimed no memory of a high-profile lawsuit brought in the mid-1990s by a man who said he was abused by the Rev. Robert Kapoun. The case attracted national attention at the time.
Flynn testified as part of a lawsuit filed by a man who says he was sexually abused by the Rev. Thomas Adamson as a child in the 1970s. The man claims the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of Winona created a public nuisance by keeping information on accused priests secret. The broad claim has allowed the man’s attorneys, Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan, to question archdiocese officials about decisions from the 1970s to the present. The archdiocese has also been forced to turn over thousands of internal documents on abusive priests.
Under oath, Flynn testified that he spent a lot of time outside of the archdiocese handling the national crisis and delegated authority to archdiocese attorney Andrew Eisenzimmer and then-vicar general Kevin McDonough. “It’s unfortunate that we did not pay more attention to this as a result,” he said of the archdiocese cases.
Anderson questioned Flynn about his interactions with Archbishop John Nienstedt, who replaced him in 2008.
Nienstedt said under oath in April that he couldn’t remember key abuse cases and never provided complete files to police. He also claimed that McDonough told him not to write down some information on abusive priests for fear it could be uncovered in a lawsuit.
Flynn testified that he didn’t recall any similar advice from McDonough and doesn’t remember any situation in which he declined to write down information.
When first asked in the deposition, Flynn said Nienstedt “probably” asked him for the names of offending priests but wasn’t certain. Later Flynn said he didn’t think Nienstedt asked him for the names but recalled that Nienstedt “was in communication about this subject” with McDonough and Eisenzimmer.
Flynn said he didn’t recall whether he received a list of offenders from his predecessor, Archbishop John Roach. He said he didn’t know why he refused to release the names of priests “credibly accused” of child sexual abuse.
Flynn said that although he couldn’t recall most abuse cases, he did recall some details about an incident involving the Rev. Joseph Gallatin, a priest who went on leave in December.
He said Gallatin touched someone on the shoulder “with his finger only” during a camping trip. It was an “inappropriate touch” but not abusive, Flynn said.
Internal records reviewed by MPR News showed that Gallatin admitted that he rubbed the chest of a teenage boy under his shirt while he slept in a bunk bed on the camping trip. Gallatin explained that he wanted the boy to stop snoring but later admitted that the incident provided sexual gratification.
Flynn said he doesn’t recall whether he investigated the Gallatin incident but doesn’t think he restricted Gallatin’s ministry at the time.
Flynn has declined interview requests in the past and could not be reached for immediate comment. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis declined to comment, according to spokesman Jim Accurso.
Payments to abusers
MPR News reported last fall that Flynn gave special payments to admitted child abusers.
Under oath, Flynn explained that he provided payments because “in justice, we needed to give them some provision” for retirement and housing.
“I felt very strongly that they would not be able to get jobs very easily, and so I wanted to give them some help,” he said.
Flynn said he provided a “financial agreement” for the Rev. Gilbert Gustafson, a priest who pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse in 1983, “but I don’t recall what it was.”
Anderson, the victims’ attorney, asked, “What message do you think that sends to the victims that he’s abused that he’s receiving payments for having victimized them?”
“What message do you think that sends to the victims that he’s abused that he’s receiving payments for having victimized them?”
Attorney Jeff Anderson
“I don’t know, but what message would it send to the world if we threw these people out in the street without any difficulty, without any assistance?” Flynn said.
“If they were thrown into jail and reported to the police, that would send a powerful message, wouldn’t it?” Anderson said.
“Yes.”
“And if the files that were maintained on Gustafson or other priests who had offended were made available to law enforcement, that would also send a powerful message, wouldn’t it?” Anderson said.
“Powerful message, yes.”
“Why hasn’t it been done? Why haven’t the files been turned over to the police?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Flynn said.
“I can’t remember.”
Flynn couldn’t recall after the national abuse scandal in 2002 whether he had determined if any of his priests had been “credibly accused” of child sexual abuse.
Flynn also claimed not to remember specific allegations against the Rev. John Brown, the former director of the archdiocese’s Boy Scouts program, who has been accused of sexually abusing boys in Waverly, Minn.
Flynn said he only remembered a handful of priests accused of child sexual abuse. For example, he said he removed the Rev. Jerome Kern from “active ministry” but couldn’t recall why. He said he assumes it was because Kern had been accused of child sexual abuse “because that would have been the only reason” for his removal.
Flynn appeared confused about whether abusive priests had left the priesthood. MPR News has reported that most abusers remained priests, regardless of whether they had been removed from parish ministry. He claimed that admitted abusersGilbert Gustafson, Robert Kapoun, Robert Thurner and Michael Stevens had left the priesthood.
All four men remain priests.
When Anderson challenged Flynn’s recollection of the priests, the former archbishop said he didn’t know the process for defrocking priests.
Flynn also testified that didn’t know the Rev. Clarence Vavra, a priest who admitted in the mid-1990s that he tried to rape a boy on an Indian reservation in South Dakota in the 1970s.
After Flynn claimed no knowledge of Vavra, Anderson pulled out a memo that Flynn received from his top deputy, McDonough, in 1996. It said psychological testing had found that Vavra was sexually attracted to teenage boys.
Confronted with the memo, Flynn said he thought Vavra’s ministry was restricted amid the national abuse scandal in 2002.
Wehmeyer and Shelley
Anderson asked Flynn about the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, a St. Paul priest who had approached young men for sex in a bookstore and received treatment for sexual problems. Wehmeyer later pleaded guilty to sexually abusing two boys and possessing child pornography.
Flynn said Wehmeyer “never came on my radar as a potential risk of harm to children.” He said he only knew that Wehmeyer “had a same-sex attraction.”
Some people told him that Wehmeyer wasn’t friendly, Flynn recalled. “There wasn’t anything that gravely concerned me … They just wanted him to loosen up a bit.”
Anderson also asked Flynn about pornography found on the Rev. Jon Shelley’s computer.
The review found “borderline illegal” pornographic images, according to internal documents obtained by MPR News, but the archdiocese did not call police. Archdiocese chancellor Jennifer Haselberger discovered the images on several disks at the chancery. She notified law enforcement in 2013 shortly before she resigned in protest of the archdiocese’s handling of abuse cases.
The archdiocese’s internal report found that Shelley had searched the Internet for the terms such as “blond boys sucking pics.”
Flynn testified that he couldn’t recall reading the private investigator’s report and denied knowledge of Shelley’s Internet search terms. He said McDonough told him that Shelley’s computer did not contain child pornography.
“I don’t know anything about computers,” he said. “And I’ve heard from people you can push things and things will come up, or push them accidentally.”
Montero
Anderson also asked Flynn about an abuse investigation into the Rev. Francisco “Fredy” Montero, a priest from Ecuador who returned to his native country amid a criminal investigation into whether he sexually abused a four-year-old girl.
Flynn said he thought that police had “cleared” Montero before he returned to Ecuador.
However, a document turned over by the archdiocese as part of the lawsuit shows that Flynn knew the investigation hadn’t been completed.
Auxiliary Bishop Richard Pates and Hispanic ministry coordinator Anne Attea explained the situation in a July 12, 2007 letter to a bishop in Ecuador and copied Flynn.
“While no charges have been filed and the child has not made any incriminating overture to the police, the case is still under investigation,” they wrote.
“Ludicrous” accusation against Bishop Paul Dudley
Anderson also asked Flynn about allegations of child sexual abuse against Bishop Paul Dudley, who died in 2006.
A man came forward in 2002 to accuse Dudley of sexually abusing him when he was an altar boy at Annunciation Church in Minneapolis in the 1950s, according to media reports. Two women also accused Dudley of misconduct. One woman claimed Dudley acted inappropriately toward her in a public place in the 1960s. Another woman said Dudley sexually abusing her when he was the pastor of Our Lady of the Lake in Mound, Minn., in the mid-1970s, according to a 2003 Star Tribune report.
Flynn hired a private investigator to review the allegations, according to statements by the archdiocese at the time. In February 2003, Flynn announced that the investigation found no evidence to support the claims of the three accusers. Dudley denied the allegations.
Under oath last month, Flynn said Dudley had been accused of dancing with a teenage girl and had been “exonerated.” He called it “the most ludicrous accusation that could have been made about anyone.”
Flynn did not mention the other allegations against Dudley.
“Suspicious” of alleged victim’s parents
Anderson asked Flynn about how he handled allegations against the Rev. Michael Keating, a professor at the University of St. Thomas who went on leave last fall shortly before he was sued for alleged sexual abuse of a teenage girl in the 1990s. The alleged victim’s parents went to the archdiocese years earlier, and Flynn said he doubted the woman’s allegations.
“I was quite disturbed because the mother and father kept putting words into her mouth,” he said.
He said he was “suspicious” of the woman’s parents. “I don’t know why, but I was,” he said.
Flynn said McDonough, his top deputy, disclosed information about the Keating case to Don Briel, the director of the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas. The Universityannounced Briel’s retirement last week amid an internal investigation into what he and others knew about the claims against Keating.
The archdiocese’s clergy review board deemed the allegation unsubstantiated but recommended that Keating not mentor young adults. Flynn testified that he cannot remember whether he followed the board’s recommendation to restrict Keating’s ministry.
Former top deputies the Rev. Peter Laird, McDonough, and former archdiocese official Robert Carlson, now the Archbishop of St. Louis, also testified under oath in the past two months. Laird testified that he told Nienstedt he should resign.
In his deposition, Flynn declined to criticize Nienstedt and wouldn’t say whether he thinks the archbishop should release all information on accused priests. “I don’t get my views since I retired,” Flynn said.
Colleen Simon insisted on performing her job this week out of devotion.
On Wednesday, she managed a delivery of 2,000 pounds of food for the pantry at St. Francis Xavier Church. It’s work she sees as fulfilling God’s will, his call to serve.
She couldn’t let the food spoil.
But apparently, that is not the way the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph sees her role. Not anymore. Not after it was publicized that Simon is gay and married to another woman.
Simon’s job unraveled in a horrible confluence of unintended consequences that ran into the Catholic faith’s hypocritical stand on homosexuality.
Simon’s work as coordinator of social ministries was profiled April 30 in The Star’s 816 newsmagazine. The article highlighted Troost Avenue — its history and the many interesting people dedicated to its vibrancy today.
Colleen Simon and her wife, the Rev. Donna Simon of St. Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church, were mentioned deep in the story, along with the fact that they are a married couple.
The freelance writer didn’t intend to out the couple. They bear no grudge to her, nor to the priest currently serving St. Francis. The Simons have never hidden their marriage (in Iowa on May 19, 2012).
Rather, Colleen Simon kept a don’t-ask, don’t-flaunt attitude. She said she told the pastor who hired her in July 2013 (he is no longer at the parish) of her marriage. But day to day, she avoided pronouns that would highlight it, substituting “my spouse” or “my beloved.”
“You don’t want your legacy to be one of division and ugliness,” she said. “It’s awful. But there are laws, and until that law gets changed in the church, it is what it is.”
She says that in a series of emails and discussions that began last week, she was asked to resign. Colleen Simon believes that the order originated from Bishop Robert Finn.
The diocese is declining to comment.
Simon is Lutheran, but she spent decades as a Catholic. And it is through Catholicism’s strong ties to charity and justice that she’s reframed her life. She moved to Kansas City from Virginia, a step in a transition from a prior career as a pharmaceutical representative.
Hers was a pastoral role at St. Francis, which she understands makes a difference to the diocese. She took great pride in leading parishioners toward a more active role in the pantry.
She pressed for the congregation to not only offer food, but to examine systemic reasons for why people hunger. It’s the social justice role of faith, long embraced by the Jesuit-affiliated St. Francis Xavier, often in conjunction with its cohort on the east side of Troost, Rockhurst University.
Simon is devastated. But her refusal to resign, her insistence on being fired, is not a stand on principle. It’s pragmatic. She might need unemployment benefits.
In November, Simon will reach the milestone of being three years cancer-free from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But many bills from her treatment remain unpaid. At 58, she worries about her ability to find a new job quickly.
She’s heartsick. But she says righteous indignation has no role here, not from her.
“I knew this was a losing engagement,” she said. “I was just hoping for a longer engagement.”
Many will find this episode shocking, believing that such discrimination is unheard of today. Headlines touting the acceptance shown to Michael Sam, the first openly gay football player on an NFL roster, are encouraging.
But important societal shifts happen by degree. Private struggles occur daily. Parents find themselves conflicted when a child comes out. Schools manage families fearful of a teacher who is believed to be gay.
And many religions grapple with balancing long-held dogma and God’s call to embrace all of humanity equally.
Pope Francis’ comment last year about homosexuality — “Who am I to judge?” — didn’t uproot Roman Catholic doctrine.
The church continues to fumble the fact that many within its flock — clergy, lay hires and parishioners — were created homosexual by God. They are people with talents to contribute. And they deserve not only God’s loving embrace but that of the faith’s leadership as well.
Veteran Catholic teacher Molly Shumate stared at the Cincinnati Archdiocese contract for next school year and thought of her son.
She remembered when a nervous Zachery Shumate, a teenager at the time, approached her and revealed his homosexuality.
His revelation prompted the first-grade teacher to give him a hug, telling her boy she would always love and support him.
So when the new teachers’ contract – strictly forbidding public support of homosexuality – was handed to her earlier this year, she was torn.
The employment contract – exclusively obtained and reported by The Enquirer in March – continues to divide huge sections of the region’s Catholics. The “morality” clauses – though not unique among Catholic schools nationwide – were a first for the 19-county Archdiocese school system.
It ignited a raging public battle, including a protest march Downtown and online petitions signed by thousands. And this week, 12 billboards opposing the contract dot the area. As the controversy grows, so too does interest around the country.
For Molly Shumate, the battle lines have surrounded her family.
Though a lifelong Catholic and devoted teacher, the lengthy contract’s starkly detailed restrictions on her personal life – and the freedom to publicly support her now 22-year-old son – stunned her.
“In my eyes there is nothing wrong with my son. This is what God gave me and what God created and someone I should never be asked to not support,” she said from her Butler County home.
“If my son were to say to me, ‘will you go somewhere with me that is supported or run by gays and lesbians,’ I would have to tell him no, according to that contract. And if my picture was taken, what would happen?” she said.
So for the first time in 14 years of teaching, Shumate will not be signing the Archdiocese’s teacher employment contract for next school year. And when the last class bell at her Hamilton County school rings out the finish of the school year later this month, it will also toll the end of her Catholic teaching career.
She is the first Archdiocese teacher to make a public stand but those opposing the contract predict more will step forward once the school year ends later this month.
“For me to sign this (contract), I feel like I would be telling my son I’ve changed my mind, that I don’t support him as I did. And I won’t do that,” she said.
Archdiocese officials remain steadfast in their support of the new contract.
Moreover, they contend some of the protests, which have attracted ancillary campaigns for private teacher employment rights, school unions and critics of the church’s policies are based on misunderstandings. Officials say much of the opposition is based on over reactions to the newly detailed personal morality provisions and how, in some circumstances, they may lead to teacher firings.
The contract – double its predecessor’s size – includes provisions that for the first time details prohibited practices such as gay “lifestyles” or public endorsements of homosexuality, out-of-wedlock relationships, abortions and fertility methods that go against Catholic teachings.
Each of the Archdiocese’s more than 2,200 teachers must sign the contract before the end of the school year if they want to remain employed. The employment agreement explicitly orders them to refrain “from any conduct or lifestyle which would reflect discredit on or cause scandal to the school or be in contradiction to Catholic doctrine or morals.” It also bans public support of the practices.
“It’s a bit frustrating to us that some of the organized opposition to our new contract language has misstated its intentions and its implications,” said Cincinnati Archdiocese spokesman Dan Andriacco.
“First of all, nobody who signed this year’s contract or last year’s contract should hesitate to sign the 2014-2015 agreement. All say the same thing – that the teacher will not publicly act or speak against the teachings of the Catholic Church,” said Andriacco.
Catholic School Superintendent Jim Rigg has previously defended the “homosexual lifestyle” section of the latest contract.
Rigg has stated “our culture is changing rapidly in this area, and many of our school employees, including me, have family members who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The contract does not stipulate that relationships of love for LGBT relatives should be severed.
“As Christians, we are called to love and serve all people … while the Church’s stance on homosexual marriage is well known, this does not mean that our teachers will be asked to cast away loved family members,” said Rigg.
But that is exactly what teachers are being asked to do, complains Tim Garry Jr., a local attorney who opposes the contract language.
In April Garry met with Archdiocese officials in an attempt to get them to modify the contract, to no avail.
Garry provided The Enquirer with the latest response from church officials to his request to meet and review his suggestions on altering the wording of the contract.
“The Archbishop does not believe that any further meeting regarding the teacher … contract is warranted,” according to a May 1 letter from Robert Reid, director of human resources for the Cincinnati Archdiocese.
Garry said the lack of discussion is frustrating.
“We’re attempting to help the teachers to have a voice in their contract,” he said.
“I doubt there is a more important contract in the Archdiocese, impacting more people, teachers, students and parents, than this contract with 2,200 or more teachers, 43,000 or so students and their parents.”
But he adds “the leadership of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is not a democracy, and there has been little to no indication that it will voluntarily respond favorably to any request for change to their Catholic School teachers’ contract, no matter how reasonable or modest those changes might be.”
The 12 billboards were paid for by the Cincinnati Voice of the Faithful, which for more than a decade has criticized the church’s alleged lack of transparency and accountability regarding the sexual abuse of children.
The group’s coordinator, Kathy Weyer, said “we believe that the Cincinnati Archdiocese is being dishonest with the teachers by suggesting that the changes to the wording and job description of the teacher … contract are not that much different from past years. What is really happening is that the church is protecting itself from possible future lawsuits.”
Zachery Shumate drapes an encouraging arm on his mother’s shoulder and praises the “courage” of her public stance as one of the first teachers to quit in protest.
“It’s hard to put into words how proud I am of her,” he said. “For her to step into the public eye like this and go against the (church) … because she has a gay son speaks volumes about the kind of person she is.”