Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who opposes gay
marriage on the grounds it's “immoral,” paid off priests accused
of sexually abusing minors to encourage them to leave the priesthood,
The
New York Times reported.
“Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New
York authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive
priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the
priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee,” the paper
wrote.
Documents unearthed by the Times
reveal that the “archdiocese did make such payments to multiple
accused priests to encourage them to seek dismissal, thereby allowing
the church to remove them from the payroll.”
When first confronted by reporters with
the allegations, Dolan dismissed the charges as “false,
preposterous and unjust.”
The 62-year-old Dolan, as president of
the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has led
Catholic opposition to gay marriage laws in the United States. He
also vociferously opposed passage of New York's gay marriage law,
describing gay unions as “immoral” and a “violation of what we
consider natural law.”