"Monsignor Robert Trupia was threatening to reveal that the late Bishop James Rausch had been an active homosexual"


Adapted higglety - pigglety, higglety - pie from this source: Philip F. Lawler's The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Church, 2008.

Pages 239 - 240.

"In a word, some bishops may have been subject to blackmail"


"Why did the American bishops tolerate misconduct among their ranks, and thus increase the risk of scandal?

"One possible explanation is that bishops were cowed by the threat that even greater scandals might be laid bare.

"In a word, some bishops may have been subject to blackmail.

"In 1992 an Arizona priest, Monsignor Robert Trupia, was accused of molesting an altar boy.

"Suspended from ministry and faced with the likely hood that his crime would become public knowledge, Trupia warned Bishop Manuel Moreno of Tucson that he was prepared to publicize my direct knowledge regarding another bishop's activities, which knowledge was potentially of a highly explosive and damaging nature to the Church in Arizona.

"Bishop Moreno understood the message; Trupia was threatening to reveal that the late Bishop James Rausch, the former Bishop of Phoenix, had been an active homosexual.

"Trupia's threat pointed clearly at one prelate.

"And the public exposure of misconduct by Bishop Rausch would indeed have been explosive, not only for Arizona but for Catholicism throughout the United States.

"Rausch had served as executive secretary of the U.S. bishops' conference.

"There he had had worked for, and eventually replaced, the future Cardinal Bernardin, who had subsequently emerged as the most prominent Catholic in America.

"If Bishop Rausch had been an active homosexual, he would himself have been subject to blackmail threats, and all his work on behalf of the US bishops' conference would be open to scrutiny. .

"Trupia's threat worked, at least temporarily..."