'You Won’t Hear Anything From Rome for 3 or 4 Years,' Testifies Bishop Steinbock, and World Sees Why It Took Decades to Move Church to Action

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Things Take So Long in the Vatican, shrugs John Steinbock, Bishop of Fresno, testifying in the March 2009 trial, Santillan Vs. Bishop of Fresno. The Bishop was answering cross examination by Jeff Anderson, explaining how he just “removed” Father Anthony Herdegen from ministry, because getting the serially accused pedophile priest laicized through the Vatican would take too long:

Q: It's correct, is it not, Bishop, that at no time have you as his Bishop attempted to petition Rome for the removal of him from the holy state of the priesthood?

A: There would be no reason for me to do that.

Q: Isn't the sexual abuse of minors a reason to remove him from the holy state of the priesthood?

A: It would be not to allow him to exercise his ministry as priest. You do not necessarily go through a- a form of Laicization.

Q Why not, Bishop? Why not?

MS. McGUIRE: Objection. Argumentative.

THE COURT: Overruled.

THE WITNESS: Well, first of all, you won't hear anything from Rome for about three or four years, because they process very slow over there. You know, to laicize a priest, you have to have all kind of proofs, a trial, all kind of things like that. And with trying to keep someone from- that has sexually abused a child, you want to make sure he's not in ministry, nor in- available to- to cause harm again for God's people.

Now, even in the charter for the Bishops of the United States, for priests of advanced age, they have exceptions to trying to- to do certain things so that you take advantage of- try to be considerate of their old age, never being in ministry, though. They may never be in ministry

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Quotes are from the Trial Transcript which City of Angels managed to acquire recently. Watch for a lot more stuff in upcoming stories from this document, which includes the testimony of two bishops.

However, the testimony of Cardinal Roger Mahony is mysteriously missing from the Trial Transcript Volumes I got.

Have yet to figure out who redacted the Cardinal.

As always, when we find a nugget of news to be shared, we'll post it. As soon as we discover it, we post it here, because The City of Angels Is Everywhere.
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