Accused Albany bishop asks to be eliminated from priesthood

VATICAN Metropolis (AP) — The retired bishop of Albany, New York, who has admitted to covering up for predator clergymen and has himself been accused of sexual abuse, has requested Pope Francis to remove him from the priesthood.

Emeritus Bishop Howard Hubbard, 84, announced the final decision in a statement Friday, the working day the United Nations designated as the Entire world Day for the Prevention of, and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence.

Hubbard claimed he required to be laicized, or returned to the lay point out, for the reason that he could no more time operate as a priest, offered U.S. church policy that bars accused monks from ministry. If recognized, laicization would minimize Hubbard of his celibacy obligations.

Asking the pope for voluntary laicization is unconventional, specifically for a bishop and specially for a cleric who denies abuse allegations versus him. Commonly clergymen question to be laicized if evidence of abuse towards them is overwhelming or if they want to leave the priesthood to get married. The Vatican can forcibly laicize priests, or defrock them, as a punishment for this sort of crimes as clergy sexual abuse.

Hubbard has acknowledged masking up allegations of sexual abuse from kids by clergymen in portion to keep away from scandal and protect the popularity of the diocese. He did so in a deposition for a single of dozens of promises by hundreds of men and women who have sued the Albany diocese over sexual abuse they say they endured as kids, at times decades ago.

But he has strongly denied accusations that he himself abused minors. In his assertion Friday, Hubbard repeated that claim of innocence.

“I hope and pray I will stay extensive enough to see my identify cleared after and for all,” he claimed.

Hubbard ran the diocese in New York’s Capital District from 1977 to 2014.

Other U.S. bishops have requested Francis to resign above their mishandling of predator monks, but not be taken off entirely from the priesthood. Francis in 2019 forcibly defrocked ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick following a church investigation decided he sexually abused adults and small children.

Story carries on

Attorneys for abuse survivors hailed Hubbard’s ask for to leave the priesthood completely as the culmination of initiatives by victims to hold the Catholic hierarchy accountable for abuse and address-up. Whilst the U.S. church has experienced a “one strike and you’re out” coverage in result for two many years, it spared bishops from sanction.

Only in 2019 did the Vatican go in-home norms to investigate accused bishops, but those people conditions have been shielded in secrecy with no entire general public accounting of who has been investigated or sanctioned and leaving it to person dioceses or bishops conferences to release information.

“We experience Hubbard’s elimination is not only justified but needed. This alerts to survivors that their voices are currently being read,” explained lawyer Cynthia LaFave in a assertion issued by the regulation workplaces of Jeffrey Anderson, who has represented hundreds of abuse survivors in the U.S.