Roger M Mahony

A Roman Catholic priest sexually molested a young parishioner while he was unconscious during a weekend trip and staged a blood ceremony cementing their "friendship," prosecutors alleged in new charges filed Wednesday. The former priest, Michael Stephen Baker, 59, has pleaded not guilty to earlier molestation charges. Arraignment on the new charges was expected today. Baker told Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of his interest in children 20 years ago.

"Deliver Us From Evil," a documentary about pedophile priest Oliver O'Grady and his devastating California legacy, has earned its filmmaker multiple awards and an Oscar nomination. Now the film is kicking up new controversy and litigation from L.A. to Ireland, where O'Grady now lives. Released in the U.S.

A Roman Catholic cardinal in Mexico said he warned Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in 1987 about a priest then seeking employment with the Los Angeles Archdiocese, who was later charged with molesting eight boys before fleeing back to Mexico, court documents said. Father Nicolas Aguilar, 64, continued to work as a priest in Mexico, where the abuse allegedly continued, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles last year accusing the cardinals of conspiring to conceal the priest's conduct.

At least six months after Cardinal Roger M. Mahony told his superiors at the Vatican that a videotape provided proof of a priest's criminal misconduct with high school boys, the head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese told the public that the tape showed no sexual activity between Father Lynn Caffoe and the boys, according to court records.

During a Mass on Monday, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony denounced proposed legislation that would allow terminally ill Californians to take their own lives with lethal drugs. Speaking to 250 worshippers scattered among the pews at Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles, Mahony called the legislation, AB 374, an "assault on life." "As we look around us, we still see many elements of a culture of death," Mahony said. "We have a new danger, an assault on life.

There was a time when Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, leader of the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, was a formidably influential political figure. A decade ago, he was a member of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan's inner circle and the spiritual leader of a growing community with exponentially expanding power. Today, Mahony remains one of the region's most recognized leaders and a sought-after voice on certain issues.

A judge Wednesday ordered Cardinal Roger M. Mahony to testify in a lawsuit alleging that he failed to protect parishioners from a pedophile teacher, but then granted the Los Angeles cleric's request for a trial delay. The lawsuit had been scheduled for trial Monday; Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Haley Fromholtz agreed to a two-month delay. Mary Grant, Western regional director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, called the delay "a shame on the church."

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony said Sunday that he decided to settle with hundreds of clergy abuse victims after talking with many of them individually over the last year and realizing how deeply they had been hurt by predatory priests. Mahony, in his first public statement since the Los Angeles Archdiocese's record $660-million settlement was reached with 508 claimants, said he told the victims, "Your life, I wish were like a VHS tape, we could put the tape in ...

Parishioners across the sprawling Los Angeles Archdiocese responded with relief, support and a measure of worry Sunday to news that the church will pay $660 million to victims of clergy sexual abuse, the largest payout to date in the nationwide Roman Catholic molestation crisis. But some also angrily blamed Cardinal Roger M. Mahony for failing to reach a settlement in the local cases years earlier.

Calling Cardinal Roger M. Mahony's actions a "moral failure," Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Monday that his five-year investigation of how top church officials handled sex-abuse accusations hinges on whether he can obtain confidential church files under a record settlement. "Cardinal Mahony and many others are going to have to live with their conscience and live with their incredible moral failure to the people of Los Angeles," Cooley said.