Mexico's top clergyman, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, was questioned by US lawyers in a child sex abuse case that is a new blow to the Roman Catholic Church in its second-largest stronghold.The lawyers met with Rivera at the capital's archdiocese building to ask about charges in a US civil case that he colluded with Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony to protect a Mexican priest wanted for multiple child rapes.
Abuse scandals have rocked the Catholic Church around the world recently and the Los Angeles diocese this year agreed to pay $660 million settlement. In Mexico, sexual abuse cases against the church have rarely come to trial but last year the cardinal was accused of covering up abuse in a civil suit lodged in Los Angeles.
"Justice cannot be had in Mexico, that's why we have to take this to foreign courts," said Eric Barragan, spokesman for SNAP, a US-based group for victims of sex abuse by priests.
The attorneys argue that former altar boy Joaquin Aguilar Mendez was raped aged 13 in Mexico in 1994 by a priest named Nicolas Aguilar, who the church shunted between Mexico and the United States to avoid abuse charges.
Rivera, a vocal figure in Mexican public life, was set to be questioned for at least six hours.
"Cardinal Rivera has voluntarily received the lawyers," said a Catholic Church official. Losing influence The church is one of Mexico's most important institutions but has been losing influence as lawmakers in the capital legalized abortion and gay civil unions.
Evangelical churches also are gaining ground in Mexico while legislators are studying liberalizing laws against euthanasia and prostitution, despite objections from the church.
Rivera, once seen as an outside candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II, says the Los Angeles court does not have jurisdiction over him because the incidents in the altar boy's allegations all took place in Mexico.
Rivera, whose Mexico City diocese is one of the world's largest, is accused of sending the priest to Los Angeles briefly, knowing that he was a pedophile who later raped the altar boy in Mexico's Puebla state in 1994.
The priest is believed to be on the run in Mexico and is wanted on multiple charges of sexually abusing boys in California.
He has not been excommunicated.
The two cardinals have contradicted each other's version of events.
Mahony says the Mexican church did not warn him of Aguilar's record when the priest arrived in Los Angeles.
Mahony publicly apologized after Mass one Sunday last month to more than 500 plaintiffs in priest abuse cases in Los Angeles who received the record $660 million settlement.
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