Payments begin for 280 priest abuse survivors in Guam
August 08, 2023
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CWN Editor's Note: Guam’s sole archdiocese—long led by a prelate who sexually abused minors—filed for bankruptcy in 2019. A settlement plan was approved in 2022.
Archbishop Anthony Apuron, OFM Cap, governed the Church in Guam from 1985 until his removal from office in 2019. In August 2018, Pope Francis said he would personally decide Archbishop Apuron’s appeal after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found him guilty of sexually abusing minors. “I am waiting for the report and then I will pass judgement,” Pope Francis emphasized.
In 2019, the Congregation announced the judgment. Even though Archbishop Apuron was found guilty of multiple “delicts against the Sixth Commandment with minors,” a relatively light sentence was imposed: “the privation of office; the perpetual prohibition from dwelling, even temporarily, in the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Agaña; and the perpetual prohibition from using the insignia attached to the rank of Bishop.”
As a result of the judgment that Pope Francis said was his own, Archbishop Apuron, despite multiple acts of sexual abuse of minors, was not consigned to a life of prayer and penance—and he is permitted to celebrate Mass outside of Guam, as long as he does not wear the distinctive insignia of a bishop.
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