An Open Letter to Bishop Joseph F. Martino

November 25, 2003

Your Excellency,

I am writing to alert you to a grave danger to the young souls whose care Holy Mother Church entrusted to you when you were made Bishop of Scranton on October 1, 2003. Your diocesan attorneys have no doubt informed you of the serious charges that have been made against the Society of St. John, a clerical association under your authority in the Diocese of Scranton. Certainly you are aware that both the former superior general and the former chancellor of the SSJ, Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity and Fr. Eric Ensey, respectively, are defendants in a million dollar plus federal lawsuit that accuses them of homosexual molestation.

Perhaps you are not aware, however, that the attorneys for defendants Fr. Urrutigoity and Fr. Ensey filed a brief last week in opposition to a motion by the plaintiffs to compel production of psychological and psychiatric records and evaluations of these two priests. I have attached to this e-mail a copy of defendants' brief which was obtained from PACER, a web site that provides access to any legal document filed in a federal lawsuit (provided the court has not sealed the document). Defendants' brief, which is labeled "document 40" on the PACER web site, includes explosive excerpts from the depositions of Bishop James Timlin, Fr. Urrutigoity, and Fr. Ensey. (Although document 40 and its attachments are thus available to the public, the court has sealed document 39, plaintiff's motion to compel production of the psychiatric records of Fr. Urrutigoity and Fr. Ensey.)

As you can see for yourself, document 40 is deeply disturbing, especially in light of the Dallas Charter which is supposed to govern bishops in their response to the sex abuse crisis in the Church. Please allow me to summarize the situation.

In response to the serious and credible accusations made against Fr. Urrutigoity and Fr. Ensey, Bishop Timlin asked these two priests to submit to psychological testing, which they did. In the attached excerpt from Bishop Timlin's deposition, he admits that the very purpose of the psychiatric exams was to determine whether or not these priests were a danger to children. Nevertheless, Bishop Timlin claims that he never received the written reports of these evaluations due to the federal lawsuit filed against these priests. In other words, Bishop Timlin, who has the authority to require his priests to submit such documents to him, chose not to read these psychiatric reports. Bishop Timlin made this decision because he knew these psychiatric reports would no longer be immune from discovery if a third party outside of the patient-client relationship were to read them. Thus, in order to keep this information out of the hands of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, Bishop Timlin never read the psychiatric reports even though he was the authority who requested them, paid for them, and knew they were crucial for judging whether these priests were a danger to children

In sum, in order to gain a tactical advantage in the courtroom, Bishop Timlin has deliberately remained ignorant of the formal psychiatric evaluations that he himself thought were warranted based upon the gravity and credibility of the accusations against these priests. Instead, Bishop Timlin allowed these accused priests to continue to present themselves to the public as functioning priests, and to mingle with minors, all the while knowing that the information in these reports might strongly counsel otherwise. To this day, then, Fr. Urrutigoity and Fr. Ensey have free access to teenage boys, a group of which recently gathered on the SSJ's Shohola property.

Your excellency, we must presume that these psychiatric reports contain damaging information concerning Fr. Urrutigoity and Fr. Ensey, for their attorneys would not be fighting to withhold these reports if they gave these priests a clean bill of mental health.

Now either you have seen these psychiatric reports or you have not. If you have seen them, then it is incumbent upon you to act upon the information contained therein. If you have not seen them, then you must decide whether you are going to follow the path of your predecessor who sacrificed knowing the truth about these psychiatric reports for the sake of obtaining an advantage in court.

The letter and spirit of the Dallas Charter make it clear that Catholic bishops, when confronting the problem of sex abuse by priests, cannot substitute secular legal standards for the higher moral standards of the Church. You must not--as Bishop Timlin has done--refuse to read these psychological reports in order to remain willfully ignorant of their contents. If you care for the young souls entrusted to you, you must read these reports and then, in light of all the evidence, act in accordance with your sacred office.

I urge all who read this letter to contact Bishop Martino at dio34@epix.net to implore him to end the cover-up in Scranton and to do what is right.

Sincerely,