Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [166]
Speaking out against the death penalty and abortion, Mahony championed the rights of immigrants, while raising funds from some of California’s richest Republicans. In 1996 Mahony purchased a five-acre parking lot off the Hollywood Freeway for $10.85 million, the site for a new cathedral.12
His ability to bounce back from criticism or bad press bestirred Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez to call him “the Teflon Cardinal.”13 Mahony, at six and a half feet, towered over Anderson at the 1998 trial in Stockton. Six months into recovery, the attorney felt raw, working late in preparing for each day in court. On the phone at night he drew comfort from Doyle’s words: You can do it. You’re not alone. A day at a time. Keep it simple.
A 1976 letter in which O’Grady admitted to molesting a girl was in his personnel file. “I was not aware of that letter,” Cardinal Mahony told the jury.
“Cardinal, if you had known that he admitted [to an earlier therapist] to touching a 9-year-old boy, would you have committed to him the full care of souls at the church at St. Andrew’s parish?” asked Anderson.
“It’s a bit speculative,” answered Mahony. “In any and all cases we—if there’s a suspicion or problem—we refer to competent professionals to assist in making the recommendations. And if the competent professionals do not raise any flag or cautions or concerns, then we act according to their judgment.”14
When the judge called a recess, the cardinal spoke with reporters in the hall. The proceedings resumed. “Cardinal,” began Anderson, “you were just out there speaking to the media. And you told the media, did you not, the following: ‘I thought when we placed O’Grady in the parish we did everything we humanly could have done to make sure there was no problem there.’ ”
“Well I’m not sure that’s the exact words, but something similar … yes.”
“At the time, Cardinal, did you talk to the police?”
“No.”
“You could have.”
“Well, I’m not sure I could have. But—”
“What was restraining you from calling the police and asking them about your priest?”
“When I was told that an allegation had been made, thoroughly investigated, found to be wanting and dismissed, I had no reason to call the police.”
“You could have sent Father O’Grady to a specialist, that is a doctor who specializes in the treatment and assessment of suspected offenders, correct?”
“At that time I was really unaware that there were such specialists.”
“You have an education in social work, correct?”
“Yes,” said Mahony, who had a master’s from Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
“When you sent him to that parish you could have gone to the priest file and looked at what was in there about Father O’Grady, could you not?”
“Yes.”15
The jury returned a verdict of $30 million, $24 million of which was punitive damages against the church. A judge later reduced the award to $7.65 million, the largest on record for clergy abuse in a California trial.
HOW THE LOS ANGELES ARCHDIOCESE GREW
Born in 1936, Roger M. Mahony grew up in North Hollywood when it still had open fields. His father was an electrician with a poultry farm; the boy mingled with Mexican workers, picking up bits of Spanish, becoming bilingual as a young man. He entered the seminary at fourteen, advancing to the college level at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, set on a gorgeous estate sixty miles northwest of the city in Ventura County. “In seminary Roger was focused on Mexicans and wanted to work with them,” recalls a former classmate, Jerry Fallon, an ex-priest. “But he also had pretty thin skin when it came to criticism.”
The Camarillo seminary’s huge Spanish colonial library sat on a hilltop with a roof-level loggia. This was a gift of Estelle Doheny, the widow of Edward L. Doheny who had made a fortune in Mexico’s oil fields in the early 1900s.16 In 1921 Doheny gave $100,000