Vatican removes Guam archbishop guilty of sexual abuse

Vatican City — The Roman Catholic archbishop of the US island territory of Guam, Anthony Apuron, has been definitively convicted of sexual abuse of minors and removed from office, the Vatican said on Thursday.

Apuron, who was accused of abusing three young men decades ago, was first convicted by a Vatican tribunal a year ago and had appealed. He has denied wrongdoing.

The tribunal of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith upheld the first verdict, a statement said.

Apuron, 73 and a native of Guam, was removed from office and prohibited from living on the island, even temporarily, the Vatican said.

The allegations against Apuron first emerged in 2016 when one of the victims, a former altar boy, came forward when he was in his 50s and other victims followed.

The Vatican said the decision announced on Thursday was definitive and no longer could be challenged on appeal. Apuron had served as the island's archbishop since 1986.

The church’s credibility has been crushed in much of the world by abuse scandals in countries including Ireland, Chile, Australia, France, the US and Poland, paying billions of dollars in damages to victims and forcing parishes to close.

The scandals have reached the upper echelons of the Vatican itself with the conviction of Cardinal George Pell, jailed for six years for abusing boys in his native Australia. He had served as the Vatican treasurer and a member of the pope’s innermost council of cardinals until his conviction in 2018.

Other senior church officials have been accused of knowingly covering up abuse, including the archbishop of Lyon who was convicted in 2019  in France for failing to report abuse.

Archbishop Michael Byrnes, a former assistant bishop of Detroit, succeeds Apuron as archbishop of the island’s single archdiocese, Agana.

The archdiocese, which has been hit by a number of lawsuits by victims of abuse, has filed for reorganisation bankruptcy in the island’s US district court. Guam’s population of about 170,000 is predominantly Catholic.

Reuters