Then-Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan sought to have notorious
pedophile priest Franklyn Becker defrocked in May 2003 in a letter to
then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, saying Becker's recent arrest and likely
court proceedings "make the potential for true scandal very real."
Attorneys for
Wisconsin sex abuse victims, who hope to depose Dolan as part of the
Archdiocese of Milwaukee's pending bankruptcy, released the letter on
Tuesday, in an effort to show that Dolan — like Archbishops William
Cousins and Rembert Weakland before him, they argue — was more concerned
about the church's reputation than the actions of an abusive priest.
"It
underscores the whole ethos, the whole desire to keep secrets and avoid
scandal," said St. Paul, Minn., attorney Jeffrey Anderson, who posted
the documents Tuesday on his website, andersonadvocates.com.
Jerry
Topczewski, chief of staff for Dolan and his successor, Archbishop
Jerome Listecki, said the letter, written nine months after Dolan's
arrival in Milwaukee, suggests he acted quickly to remove Becker, and
that the "true scandal" referred not to the church or hierarchy, but to
the people of the archdiocese.
The delay by the Vatican may have been
caused by the deluge of requests after the Dallas Charter on the
protection of children passed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
was passed in 2002, Topczewski said.
A spokesman for Dolan at the Archdiocese of New York did not immediately comment.
Becker, 73,
who was diagnosed as a pedophile in 1983, was laicized in November 2004,
18 months after Dolan's request.
Becker had been arrested on sex abuse
charges in California weeks before Dolan wrote to Ratzinger, now Pope
Benedict XVI, who at the time headed the Vatican's Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith.
Ratzinger's
secretary responded in October 2003, asking Dolan to ask Becker to
voluntarily seek laicization, agreeing to remove him if the priest
declined.
Becker, who
lives in Mayville and appears on the archdiocese website of abusive
priests, molested numerous minors between 1966 and 1982, according to
the documents Dolan provided to the Vatican in 2003.
He was reported to
archdiocese officials as early as 1970 and admitted a relationship with a
boy in a letter to then Archbishop Rembert Weakland in 1980.