Cardinal shelters fugitive child abuse priest in Honduras

A CARDINAL mentioned as a candidate to be the next Pope sent a fugitive priest accused of molesting an altar boy in Costa Rica to work in two remote parishes in Honduras, it was reported yesterday.

The Dallas Morning News, which has conducted a year-long investigation of runaway Catholic priests, said Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez put the Rev Enrique Vasquez to work in the parishes from last year until March, when Vasquez fled the village of Guinope days ahead of police.

Cardinal Rodriguez, head of the Honduran Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, did not respond to written questions from the newspaper. The Rev Juan Lopez, a top adviser to Cardinal Rodriguez, told the newspaper the cardinal was too busy to be interviewed.

Vasquez had fled criminal accusations in Costa Rica in 1998 and served in dioceses in New York and Hartford, Connecticut, before fleeing again and spending time in a clergy treatment centre in Mexico, the newspaper reported. Officials in both US dioceses said Vasquez had a letter from the Costa Rican diocese indicating he was in good standing.

Vasquez helped start a training centre for Catholic lay people in El Paraiso, Honduras, and was the resident priest in Guinope, Honduras, before fleeing, the News reported.

Tegucigalpa church officials “realised they had a problem, and they got rid of him”, said Lt Julian Rivera of Interpol, which is searching for Vasquez on behalf of the Costa Rican government. Interpol has not questioned Rodriguez.

Costa Rican Bishop Angel San Casimiro said he freed Vasquez to work abroad in the mid-1990s after he said Vasquez admitted abusing a 10-year-old altar boy. He said he did not recommend Vasquez for work elsewhere after the priest was accused of abuse in a criminal complaint.

San Casimiro said he did not know how Vasquez got a job in Honduras, and that Cardinal Rodriguez had not checked with him.

The newspaper said Cardinal Rodriguez, 61, has spoken against telling police about allegations of abuse.

“For me it would be a tragedy to reduce the role of a pastor to that of a cop,” Cardinal Rodriguez said in a 2002 news conference in Rome as the abuse scandal in the United States was exploding. “We are totally different and I’d be prepared to go to jail rather than harm one of my priests. We must not forget that we are pastors, not agents of the FBI or CIA.”

Lopez, the cardinal’s adviser, said Vasquez had not worked in the Guinope parish on a permanent basis. “He’s not our priest. He doesn’t belong to the archdiocese,” he said.

The newspaper said Lopez initially told it that Vasquez never worked in the Tegucigalpa area, but later said he might have seen Vasquez at a meeting of archdiocese priests.

Several members of the parish told the News that Vasquez led their congregation for about seven months. They want him to return, saying he planted flowers, got people to attend services and formed youth Bible study groups.

“The kids were crying for him when he left,” said Ilsa Celinda Rodriguez, who looks after the church grounds.