"Marcial Maciel is ... very dear to Pope John Paul II".

Manta Purpura: Pederastia clerical en tiempos del cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera (Purple Robe: Clerical Pederasty in the Times of Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera)

Sanjuana Martinez

(Grijalbo, 2008, 303pp) 978-780-251-3, $20.95

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SCARCELY A WEEK GOES BY another media story about clerical sexual abuse scandals. In July 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the United States, agreed to a payment of $660 million to hundreds of victims of clergy sexual abuse. In September, the Diocese of San Diego agreed to a payment of nearly $200 million to 144 victims. In December, an HIV-positive Navy chaplain pied guilty to preying on vulnerable lower-ranking troops, while the diocese of Davenport, Iowa, agreed to a $37 million settlement with 156 abuse victims. Added to the huge settlements paid out in recent years by Boston and other dioceses, the total bill to the church and its insurers has topped $2 billion.

This sordid mess has been well documented by many authors, researchers and advocates around the world. They are joined by Mexican journalist Sanjuana Martinez with a thorough expose of the abuse problem in Mexico and its links to the same mess in California. Unfortunately for most US readers, the book is available only in Spanish.

Among Martinez' findings and conclusions: An estimated 30 percent of Mexico's 14,000 active priests have been involved in sexual abuse, a figure higher than that found in either the United States or Spain. Mexican Cardinal Norberto Rivera and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony both transferred abusing priests from one parish to another and even shuffled them between the United States and Mexico to cover up the abuse, apparently without any complaint from the Vatican. Although church and state are supposedly separate in Mexico, church officials seem to be immune from civil law; and Cardinal Rivera is a poor excuse for a religious leader.

Martinez touches on the case of Fr. Martial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ, accused of a number of instances of abuse of young men. In the late 1990s, Fr. Alberto Athie got Bishop Carlos Talavera of Coatzacoalcos to take up the Maciel matter with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, now Pope Benedict XVI. Bishop Talavera reported that Ratzinger told him, "Lamentably, the case of Marcial Maciel cannot be opened because he is a person very dear to Pope John Paul II and, in addition, has done much good for the Church. I'm sorry, but it's not possible."

WHEN TALAVERA REPORTED "back to Fr. Athie, the latter said, "Now I understand less than ever. How is it possible that Ratzinger, whose job is to safeguard the faith and morals of the church, could say that? How is it possible that the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does not see it prudent to investigate a violator of minors like Fr. Marcial Maciel?" And with that, Athie decided to leave the priesthood.

Regarding another case, Martinez writes: "Remember the first bishop of Celaya, 'a really bad type who had orgies in his house and abused minors,' arrived at a situation so complicated with so many internal and external complaints that the police told the papal nuncio that if the church did not remove him from the city, they would have to arrest him. 'It was then that the nuncio removed the bishop and we don't know if he left the country. He suddenly disappeared. Where is he? What is he doing now? Is he still abusing minors?'"

EDD DOERR is the president of Americans for Religious Liberty and the author of more than 3,500 published works, including books, articles, columns, reviews, translations, letters, short stories and poems. He has made more than 2,000 speeches and radio and television appearances.