Mexico City – A Mexican man who is suing two powerful Catholic cardinals for allegedly conspiring to protect a pedophile priest held a press conference here Wednesday to demand jail time for the cleric he accuses of raping him when he was a 13-year-old altar boy.
Joaquin Aguilar, now 25, told reporters that he fears for his life and that of his relatives one day after a suit was filed on his behalf in California against Cardinals Norberto Rivera, archbishop of Mexico City; and Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles.
The two prelates preside over the largest Catholic dioceses in their respective countries.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, accused the cardinals of negligence and of conspiring to protect the fugitive Mexican priest and accused pedophile Nicolas Aguilar.
Joaquin Aguilar, who is not related to the priest, said that in 1994 the cleric sexually abused him when he was an altar boy at a church in the Mexican capital. He said he reported the crime to authorities but that nothing was done.
“We’ve gone to the U.S. courts to have this priest punished, to fight against impunity and clean up the Catholic Church,” said Joaquin Aguilar, who was accompanied by his U.S. lawyers Jeffrey Anderson and Vance Owen and representatives of SNAP.
He added that “the least this priest deserves is jail time.”
Attorney Owen said that SNAP filed the civil suit in Los Angeles because Rev. Aguilar is accused of sexually abusing children and adolescents in California, where he was transferred at Rivera’s recommendation and served at a diocese supervised by Mahony.
Both prelates were named in the suit “because they were the priest’s superiors and protected him by transferring him to another parish, rather than punishing him for his crimes,” said Owen.
According to Owen and Anderson, evidence of the cardinals’ negligence and their “conspiracy” to protect the cleric is contained in several letters they wrote to each other, the copies of which were given to the Mexico City press on Wednesday.
Cardinal Rivera denied, through his spokesman, that he had covered up Aguilar’s alleged crimes or conspired to protect religious persons accused of sexual abuse.
The SNAP’s lawsuit contends that Rivera sent the Rev. Aguilar to Los Angeles in 1987 – when the former was bishop of the central Mexican town of Tehuacan – even though some 80 boys and girls in Mexico had accused the priest of sexual abuse.
Aguilar remained in Los Angeles for nine months, between 1987 and 1988, during which time 26 people brought charges against Aguilar for alleged abuse, the SNAP said.
