Catholic Bishop Daniel Walsh of the Santa Rosa, CA diocese has resigned from his post after his diocese was hit with two lawsuits involving child sex abuse by former priests.
Walsh was threatened with criminal charges in 2006 for failing to report the alleged misconduct of the Reverend Xavier Ochoa, allowing him time to flee to Mexico. Walsh agreed to counseling and was not charged.
Diocese spokeswoman Deirdre Frontczak says “Walsh is very tired after a difficult decade.” Walsh’s resignation comes a year short of his mandatory retirement at age 75.
Walsh’s resignation adds to a long string of sexual abuse scandals shadowing the Catholic church in the last decade. In Los Angeles a visiting priest who was convicted of multiple sex abuse counts had a prior criminal history in Italy and was rejected by another Southern California diocese because of concerns about his past. But the Los Angeles Archdiocese accepted his application and assigned the young priest to St. Thomas the Apostle where he went on to molest at least three children.
Dan Rather reported on HDNet that the Rev Fernando Lopez Lopez pleaded guilty in 2000 to repeated sexual violence on a minor in Italy before he left the Diocese of Tivili and arrived in Southern California. The report was not immediately confirmed by the Associated Press.
Lopez Lopez, 47, had been turned away by the Diocese of San Bernardino because of concerns about his past in Italy, including the priest's own statements that some parishioners there believed he was abusing drugs and having sexual contact with members of the parish youth group, according to court papers reviewed by the AP.
The archdiocese received a completed affidavit from the priest's Italian bishop when he was hired in 2001 saying he was fit for duty, according to court papers. The church later removed him from ministry and contacted police after receiving a complaint in 2004. The church's own investigation uncovered Lopez Lopez's other victims, Hennigan said.
The archdiocese removed Lopez Lopez in July 2004 after receiving its first complaint, six months after it had received the warning letter from San Bernardino.
Lopez Lopez was convicted of multiple sex abuse counts in 2005 and served three years of a nearly seven-year sentence before being deported to his native Colombia.
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