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Breach of Faith

A California diocese struggles to overcome a series of scandals involving sexual
abuse, financial mismanagement, embezzlement, and blackmail.

By Brian O’Neel

In the Diocese of Santa Rosa, California, the people are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In what can only be called a nightmarish year for everyone concerned, the diocese has endured a relentless barrage of scandals and bad headlines. In their wake has been left a shattered faith for some Catholics and shattered trust among the rest.

The trouble began percolating in 1993, when several young men accused a priest of having assaulted them sexually when they had been teenagers at a summer camp. Over the next few years, four more priests became entangled in sex abuse cases. Headlines about the molestation charges began to appear regularly in the local paper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

In 1996, Father Jorge Hume Salas, a priest at St. Mary of the Angels parish in Ukiah, admitted he had stolen $1,200 from the collection plate. Before charges could be filed against him, however, Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann prevailed upon the police chief—a Catholic and parishioner at St. Mary’s—to drop the case, which was kept under wraps for the next three years.

Through it all, Ziemann presented a reassuring and pastoral face to parishioners throughout the diocese. As if to emphasize his contention that all was fine, he authorized numerous building projects. His administrative style and actions conveyed the message that while the Diocese of Santa Rosa might face a lot of unseemly court cases, the Church and her people there would persevere.

Then on the morning of July 20, 1999, the local newspapers broke the story that Salas had filed a suit accusing Ziemann of coercing sexual favors. According to Salas, Ziemann demanded sex in return for the bishop’s promise that he would not give the police evidence regarding Salas’s crime. Thus began (according to the Salas lawsuit) a two-year period of late night encounters at the bishop’s residence and in hotels. The lawsuit alleged: “Often [Salas] would cry when forced to perform acts on Ziemann, and he begged Ziemann to stop calling him for sex. Ziemann would tell him over and over that this was the last time.”

Less than a week after that story hit the headlines, Ziemann announced his resignation. Pope John Paul II named San Francisco’s Archbishop William Levada to act as apostolic administrator of the diocese until the Vatican could name a replacement.

At this point, most of the Catholic faithful in the diocese thought the worst was over. They were wrong.

Upon assuming his new responsibilities, Archbishop Levada ordered an audit of the diocesan books and found a level of mismanagement that stunned and amazed everyone concerned. The diocese was somewhere between $16 million and $30 million in debt. The diocese had become involved in shady European pyramid schemes; it had no money to cover payroll; it was on the verge of losing its medical coverage. Only an emergency loan of $6 million that Levada arranged from the state’s other dioceses enabled Santa Rosa to meet its immediate payroll obligations.

Not long after this, the papers reported that another priest was alleged to have seduced a mentally unstable female schoolteacher. This was followed by the revelation of still more details about a cast of characters from the Santa Rosa diocese:

the bishop, Salas, the former diocesan finance administrator, and the priests who had previously been accused of sexual assault.

How did it all begin?

The story more or less begins with the appointment of Ziemann as the fifth bishop of the Diocese of Santa Rosa, which encompasses over 11,000 square miles, stretching from Petaluma, which is 45 minutes north of San Francisco, to the Oregon border. Prior to his appointment, Ziemann was serving as an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, with responsibility for the Santa Barbara region. He had also taught at the archdiocesan seminary high school, Our Lady Queen of Angels.

As he would be in Santa Rosa, Bishop Ziemann was quite popular with his parishioners in Santa Barbara. Area resident Ron Lawson collaborated frequently with the auxiliary bishop, and says:

I found him to be quite effective and adroit in handling challenging questions in an orthodox manner. As far as I know, there were no inklings of his problems in the Santa Barbara region, and everyone was quite unhappy to see him go. It was a blow to effective young adult ministry, as far as I’m concerned.

A former seminarian who studied under his care recalls that Bishop Ziemann was a favorite at the Los Angeles major seminary. “He would actually come and visit seminarians,” he says. “He took an active interest in us, whereas the other auxiliaries were never heard from. His region was where all the seminarians were coming from.”

Given that background, it is not surprising that Bishop Ziemann was chosen to head the Diocese of Santa Rosa. That diocese has found it difficult to recruit men for the priesthood from its own parishes. Bishop Ziemann was likely seen as an antidote for that problem. And given his pastoral successes, especially with young people, he was probably seen as someone who could cope successfully with the sexual scandals that were then coming to light.

When he arrived in the summer of 1992, Ziemann made a quick and favorable impression. The big, burly man insisted that his flock call him “Bishop Pat.” He developed a reputation for giving out hugs, in much the way that St. Nicholas distributed alms to the poor. He set about expanding the diocese’s ministry to Latinos, the poor, the homeless, and AIDS patients. He accompanied diocesan youth to Denver for World Youth Day 1993.

“He was the type of bishop who chose to spend Christmas Day each year with clients of our homeless programs, listening to their stories, and distributing donated gifts,” said Catholic Charities Executive Director Maureen Shaw.

A member of the board for the local Catholic Charities, Barbara Konicek, said:

Catholic Charities was not going too well when he arrived. It needed leadership. Before he got here, the other bishops were not as sympathetic to the homeless and poor. [Ziemann] thought we could do more.

The new bishop bolstered the diocese’s youth ministry, creating one of the largest programs in the nation. “If he had an invitation to speak to young people,” said Director of Youth Ministry Stan Cordero, “he would make every effort to be there. It didn’t matter how big or how small the group was.”

Even detractors admired Ziemann’s efforts. One diocesan priest, who declined to be identified, said:

There was no end of his enthusiasm and no end to his zeal. He would drive for hours up to Crescent City just to confirm five young people. Anybody who tried to keep up with him would have been exhausted.

Signs of trouble

But beneath the surface, there were some noteworthy indications that Bishop Ziemann was ill suited for the job ahead of him.
According to the Press Democrat, in 1980 Ziemann was asked by a former high school seminary student to investigate his allegations that his principal had molested him and a friend.

“I expected Father Ziemann to cause an investigation,” said the student, Richard Nason. “I understood that he would take action.”

Years later, however, Nason discovered that Ziemann had done nothing. “I felt let down by Father Ziemann, and was very distressed that the abuse had continued,” he says. Ziemann denies that Nason told him anything significant.

Another telltale incident occurred just a few months prior to Ziemann’s installation as bishop of Santa Rosa, when a high profile theft and sex scandal broke in the Santa Barbara region. On May 29, police in Hollywood arrested a Simi Valley priest for possessing traces of cocaine. The priest was found in a car carrying $10,000 in cash, and accompanied by an illegal Mexican immigrant.

An investigation discovered a total of $60,000 in cash in the car and apartment of the accused cleric, Father David Piroli. But despite indications that the money had been taken from parish funds, Ziemann and other diocesan officials refused to press charges against the priest. This situation greatly frustrated police. At the time Bishop Ziemann told the Los Angeles Times that he did not press charges because, “We wanted to hear Piroli’s side of the story.”

Succumbing to pressure from law-enforcement officials, Ziemann eventually relented, and allowed the district attorney to bring embezzlement charges against Piroli. During the final stage of the trial, prosecutors and investigators were stunned to learn that the archdiocese had audited Piroli’s parish bookkeeping records, but had kept the results of that audit secret.

In retrospect, an observer can begin to see the emergence of a pattern of behavior, in which Bishop Ziemann assured victims and officials that he would do something to correct a problem, but then in fact did nothing. That pattern would repeat itself over the next seven years in Santa Rosa.

Another indication that Ziemann was not up to the task of heading his own diocese came in comments he made to the congregation at a farewell Mass in Carpinteria, just before he left for Northern California. Nason, the former seminarian recalls:

In his homily, he commented—something along the lines that this was the first time he’d ever been put in charge of something. I guess he was an associate pastor as a young priest, and then spent much of his time teaching teenage seminarians.

Then he was made auxiliary bishop, in which he did a lot of traveling. But none of these positions were ones involving the sort of administrative/pastoral authority exercised by a pastor or ordinary.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but obviously the lack of experience and competence in that area came home to roost.

First irregularities

When Bishop Ziemann arrived in Santa Rosa, he quickly became acquainted with Msgr. Thomas Keys, the diocese’s chief financial officer and vicar general. Msgr. Keys had been in the diocese 22 years, arriving in Santa Rosa shortly after his ordination in Ireland. In 1979, he was made diocesan chancellor. He became financial officer in 1985, and in 1987 was made vicar general, a position in which he served three bishops. During the year in which the Vatican was conducting the search that culminated in Ziemann’s appointment, Keys served as interim administrator of the diocese. His temporary tenure earned him a reputation as aloof and somewhat autocratic, exercising “unbridled power in making things happen in the six-county North Coast church,” according to the Press Democrat.

Less than two weeks after his installation in Santa Rosa, Bishop Ziemann met Salas for the first time. At the time, Salas was not an ordained priest. He had come to the North Coast on the recommendation of Father Jesse Galaz, the director of vocations for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. After meeting with Santa Rosa’s director of Hispanic vocations, Father Xavier Ochoa, Salas arranged a meeting with Ziemann. Based on this meeting, Ziemann assigned Salas to St. Mary of the Angels parish in Ukiah, which lies nearly three hours north of San Francisco.

Salas was assigned to try to increase Hispanic participation in the parish—a job he reportedly performed well. He started a parish soccer team and actively worked to make more Latinos active in the predominantly “Anglo” parish. But there were also some irregularities.

“When he got here, he started a youth group and a soccer team with the uniforms, trophies and the whole bit,” says Sister Jane Kelly, PBVM, who had been appointed by Ziemann to act as Salas’s supervisor. Salas had been collecting money from families for the programs. She continues:

I asked him, “Where is the money for all of this?” He said he was keeping it. I said, “You can’t do that, Jorge, you have to do it through the pastor.

Also irregular was the way in which Salas became a priest. He told Sister Kelly, Bishop Ziemann, and others that he had taken numerous theology, philosophy, and other classes over a period of three years in the Universidad Intercontinental and the Universidad La Salle in Mexico City. Based on those assurances, and despite his lack of formal seminary study, Salas was ordained by Ziemann in November 1993. This, says Sister Kelly, was the beginning of the end.

When he first came to the parish, Salas had been involved in religious-education programs and other pastoral efforts. But “once he got ordained, that all went out the window,” recalls Sister Kelly. “Also, he was always asking for donations, every time he baptized a baby, every time he celebrated reconciliation, or First Communion,” she adds. “It was obvious he was not out for the spiritual good of the people.”

The problem emerges

Less than three years later, Ziemann removed Salas from St. Mary’s parish, although no one would give a reason for the transfer. Salas was assigned to St. Anthony’s parish in Mendocino for a short time, but the pastor there, according to Kelly, quickly protested. So Salas was again transferred, to St. John the Baptist Church in Healdsburg, a 20-minute drive away from Santa Rosa, where he spent a year learning English and working with AIDS patients. In February 1998, he was moved to St. John Church in Napa.

According to the Press Democrat, St. John’s pastor Father Tim O’Sullivan said Bishop Ziemann had told him that Salas had had some problems in Ukiah, but would not elaborate. “I quickly learned much more,” said O’Sullivan. When asked to elaborate for this story, O’Sullivan declined.

For nearly two years, as it turns out, Sister Kelly and others had pleaded with Bishop Ziemann to tell the world what that “much more” was. Repeatedly stonewalled by Bishop Pat, however, Sister Kelly finally went public with her story in January 1996.

St. Mary’s pastor Father Hans Ruygt had essentially fired Salas for stealing from the collection. But that was not all. In April 1996, three months before he was removed from St. Mary of the Angels, several Latino leaders in the area met with Bishop Ziemann. They gave him the tape-recorded statements of four young adult males who charged that Salas had sexually approached them.

To put that meeting in context, it should be understood that the Latino parishioners met with Ziemann just five months after the bishop had urged a gathering of the diocesan faithful to pray for healing after the rash of sex abuse scandals that were then already rocking the diocese. At that gathering, the bishop promised that he would quickly follow up on any credible allegations of clerical sexual abuse.

According to the Press Democrat, “The alleged incidents on the Ukiah tape ranged from sexual groping to masturbation of one man while he was sleeping.” Ramon Mendoza, who was present when the men taped their statements and when Ziemann heard them said, “We were told he would take care of everything.”

But as he had done in 1980 in the case involving Richard Nason, Bishop Ziemann claimed that while he remembers the meeting with the parishioners from St. Mary of the Angels, he never received any tapes. “I don’t have anything like that,” he said when questioned about the tapes. He refused all other comment.

Stolen funds

A month later, Father Salas confessed to stealing the collection money. For nearly a year his pastor, Father Hans Ruygt, had suspected that someone was stealing from the parish, because certain regular sums, which came in regularly from particular parishioners, were missing from the collection basket. He asked the Ukiah police to set up surveillance cameras in the church office. The thefts stopped temporarily, but in early 1996 they began again.

A Ukiah detective later concluded that Salas was taking bank bags out of the safe, breaking the seal, and removing some cash. Salas would place the remaining money in an identical bank bag, which he would then freshly seal and place in the safe. Father Ruygt and the parish staff realized that Salas was the culprit after they began using numbered bags for specific collections.

When they confronted him on May 26, 1996, Salas had a young male in his room at the rectory. This was despite Bishop Zeimann’s specific order that Salas should not allow any young male visitors to stay overnight in his rectory room.

The day after Salas was confronted and confessed, Bishop Ziemann drove to Ukiah. He met with Father Ruygt and with Ukiah police chief Fred Keplinger, a St. Mary’s parishioner. Confronted with the evidence of Salas’s theft, the bishop admonished everyone to keep silent. “It was the only time I ever allowed my religion to interfere with my professional duties,” said Keplinger. “It was a mistake I deeply regret.”

Because the diocese would not press charges, Keplinger could not pursue the case. Bishop Ziemann arranged for St. Mary’s to receive $4,100 to reimburse the parish for the theft, although Father Ruygt claims the stolen funds amounted to roughly $10,000. (Salas only admits to taking $1,200; he claims that he gave the money to Hispanic charities.)

It was in this context that on March 7, less than two months after the Salas story broke, Bishop Ziemann went to speak to St. Anthony Church in Mendocino. According to a transcript of the meeting that formed the basis for reports in San Francisco Faith, the bishop specifically assured parishioners that Salas was not a homosexual.

“I sent Father Jorge to a five-day residential therapy program,” Ziemann told the assembly, “and they confirmed that he was not a pedophile and that he was heterosexual.”

Asked why the Church had not prosecuted Salas for his theft, Ziemann explained:

My legal advisors said his confession would not hold up in court because it was a confession made to Father Hans, behind a closed door, on the other side of which was a policeman taking notes. So we had to make a judgment not to prosecute even though that disappointed some of the parish council people. But it was a judgment made under the advice of counsel.

The bishop tossed in another consideration:

And there was the dilemma, of course, that Father Jorge had a very strong following of Hispanic people in that parish, and I just didn’t want something to go to court that would be thrown out of court.

There then ensued a remarkable exchange. One parishioner asked Bishop Pat how he could have transferred Salas to a new parish. “I don’t understand why a priest who has stolen money does not lose his job.”

Ziemann responded, “Well, I removed him because of that.”

The parishioner riposted, “You removed him, but assigned him to another parish.”

“I removed him for a year and nine months,” said Ziemann. “When he was sent to Napa, one of the conditions was that he was not to be anywhere near money.”

To this another parishioner said, “If a man steals money, then his character is probably not sound.”

“Sure, sure,” Ziemann replied, continuing:

But then you have the problem, of course, that, according to Church law, then we would have to give him a stipend the rest of his life. We have to take care of him. He is one of ours, huh? . . . A priest is not an employee. I can’t just fire him.

Noting that Salas was again accused of accosting young Hispanic men at his new parish in Napa, someone asked Ziemann how a parish could know if a transferred priest is morally upright. “You can certainly ask me,” Ziemann said. “If there’s something in the past, I will tell those who need to know.” This echoed the comment he had made on several occasions: “I will respond to any credible accusations.”

New scandals break

The biggest news about the Santa Rosa diocese during the six months after the furor over Salas’s theft was the story of the continuing sex abuse cases involving several diocesan priests.

Most of the headlines concerned Gary Timmons, a priest who by then had been laicized, who was accused of molesting 20 young boys over the course of a quarter century. A priest who had served with Timmons in Eureka was also accused of molesting a boy more than 20 years ago. He committed suicide shortly after the charges became public.

For many people in the Santa Rosa diocese, it seemed that the news reports could not possibly be any worse. Then they opened the newspaper on July 20 to discover that Father Salas had accused Bishop Ziemann of sexually abusing him, and was suing the bishop for $8 million. The suit alleged that Ziemann coerced sexual favors in return for his agreement not to press charges against Salas. Less than a week after that story appeared, Bishop Ziemann’s resignation became official. (The announcement of the bishop’s resignation actually completed a process that had begun quietly in April, when Ziemann first realized that a lawsuit was imminent.)

Upon assuming control of the diocese, Archbishop Levada asked for a review of Salas’s file. The review discovered that shortly after Salas’s ordination, Ziemann received information that Salas was unfit for the priesthood. Levada’s investigation also revealed that Ziemann had not followed the standards for ordination set by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, which require at least two years of formal training in the diocese before a man can be ordained to the priesthood.

In his application for the diocese, Salas had written that he first felt the call to the priesthood in the late 1970s. He wrote: “But I could not enter as a student in the seminary, as my parents did not have the financial means. I had to dedicate myself to work, and so had to make a seminary within my family.”

Now yet another curious bit of background about Salas emerged. According to his attorney, Irma Cordova, it was at this time that her client began to act as a priest. She told the Press Democrat, “He always wanted to be a priest. Father Salas was 15 or 16 when he was supposedly ordained [by] a local priest by the name of Rosendo Salas Valenciano.”

In 1983, Salas entered the Seminario Mayor in the Diocese of Comayagua, Honduras. At that point, Irma Cordova relates, Salas realized that he had been wrong to pose as a priest, and asked Bishop Gerald Scarpone of Comayagua for forgiveness. Bishop Scarpone granted a dispensation in January 1983, and gave Salas a certified document saying he was “excused from all irregularities that happened during offenses committed against” canon law. Nevertheless, the seminary’s director had Salas expelled.

The Press Democrat reported that Bishop Scarpone told the seminary to give Salas another chance. In his letter of May 29, 1984, the Honduran bishop described Salas’s transgressions as “impeding his reception of the orders of a priest, but not his studies of theology.” Bishop Scarpone later said that Salas’s fraudulent impersonation was the act of a youth who did not know better.

Despite this experience in Honduras, Salas marked “No” to the question on his application asking whether he had previously attended seminary. Instead, he wrote that he had been working to pay off bills. Salas listed the courses he took at Universidad Intercontinental on his application, but his list differed from the courses listed on his official transcripts.

Another Salas attorney, Jeff Gibson, claims that Salas did not actually lie on his application. “There is an error with respect to his written application in English,” Gibson says. “Salas didn’t speak English at the time. In fact, some of his answers were nonsensical because he didn’t know what he was writing.”

But his experience of impersonating a priest in Honduras was not isolated. Salas had also told several people that he was associated with the Claretian order in Chicago, under whose auspices he attended seminary in New Jersey. The Claretians confirm Salas was a seminarian, but say he was removed from the seminary after posing as a priest during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He would not likely have been discovered if not for two women who had been on the pilgrimage with him. They came to the Claretians’ parish in Chicago asking for him and showed photographs of him “celebrating Mass.”

Two years later, a seminary in Bolivia expelled Salas for falsifying his resume, and for possession of a condom and pornographic materials. Gibson now says: “Father Salas never admitted to having any porn. That rumor was circulated by a Bolivian seminary based on a telephone conversation.” He did not elaborate.

A house in ruin

At the same time that Archbishop Levada was investigating Salas’s background, he was also investigating the handling of the Santa Rosa diocese’s finances under Bishop Ziemann and Msgr. Keys.

According to numerous sources, Ziemann’s financial “plan” consisted of giving money to any diocesan entity that needed help. If a parish school couldn’t survive without a diocesan subsidy, Ziemann made sure it received the needed funds. If the bishop was convinced that a new outreach program within the diocese would be useful, he established that program. Maurice Healy, a spokesman for Archbishop Levada, characterized the Ziemann financial approach as one that said: “Go ahead and put a roof on; we’ll find the money somewhere.”

“The financial crisis happened because Bishop Pat was overzealous,” says one diocesan priest. “He was attempting to fund ministries far beyond our capacity to absorb the cost.”

The subsidies, new parish construction projects, and what investigators charitably called “poor investment decisions” put the Santa Rosa diocese in the red. In order to make up for that deficit, Ziemann and Keys tapped into restricted funds from “consolidated accounts” and from the diocesan pension plan to keep the diocese afloat. These consolidated accounts were central accounts into which parishes and diocesan schools could contribute funds that they were saving for particular purposes. Thus, for example, St. Rose’s School in Santa Rosa had deposited $1 million in the consolidated accounts over a period of several years, in anticipation of constructing a new school building. Other parishes had deposited their operating funds into the accounts.

Now the diocese had tapped into those accounts, and had also invested some funds in a shaky pyramid investment scheme managed by slick financial planners in Luxembourg. As a result, Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa lost $1 million. Several parishes lost close to $2 million. St. Bernard’s parish school in Eureka had been heavily subsidized for 30 years, and had the subsidy cut off after Archbishop Levada’s audit. Holy Family School in Lakeport also had its subsidy removed, and closed at the end of the academic year.

These heavy financial losses came at a time when the diocese had already been forced to pay out millions of dollars to victims of sexual abuse. These payments included $1.6 million to settle the sexual abuse suit brought against a former priest and current youth minister, Don Kimball. One of the women who brought the suit, now 35 years old, claimed that when she had been 13, Kimball had raped her on the floor of the sanctuary at Resurrection parish. She alleges that she became pregnant and that Kimball drove her to San Francisco for an abortion. Kimball denies all those charges.

For many Santa Rosa Catholics, the financial scandal came as a new shock. For others it was expected. One diocesan priest observes:

It wasn’t a surprise. It made me very angry. I saw the handwriting on the wall and saw it come full circle. For years, I’ve said Keys was inept. I said of Pat Ziemann he has incredibly poor judgment and has very poor management skills.

As a result of the financial scandal, Msgr. Keys was forced to resign as the diocese’s chief finance officer. He later claimed that he tried to warn people of the financial problems. There is at least some truth to that claim. “We were simply told ‘There’s a temporary cash flow problem,’” says the diocesan priest.

“He mentioned something but it was not with the emergency he could have,” says Msgr. John Brenkle, who was appointed by Archbishop Levada to the chief finance post in the Santa Rosa diocese in the wake of Msgr. Keys’s resignation. “How does one issue a warning? It can be put mildly, or one can say, ‘Hey, we’re about ready to go under!’”

To recoup some of its losses, the diocese is now selling its house of prayer in Sebastopol for $700,000. It also recently agreed to sell, for $5 million, the 14-acre property surrounding the Carrillo Adobe, the oldest home in Santa Rosa.

Sordid ending

In early October 1999, it was revealed that Salas had secretly taped conversations with Ziemann. The tapes were part of the evidence the district attorney examined as he sought to determine whether or not to bring charges against the bishop.

Recorded on September 8, 1998, at the end of their alleged two-year liaison, the conversations took place at Ziemann’s residence.

“You know when we were physically intimate with each other?” asks Ziemann. “It has been my fault and I am sorry for that. I don’t think you wanted to do that. Maybe I’ll make it up to you.”

“It’s too late, bishop,” Salas says in response.

Shortly after the release of the tapes, it was revealed that Salas had been taping conversations with Bishop Ziemann for nearly a year and a half. The bishop’s attorney, Adrienne Moran, argued that this new revelation should raise doubts about the motivations behind the Salas lawsuit. She said:

During our deposition of him, Father Salas admitted he’d made several other secret recordings, all of which were orchestrated by his lawyer. It confirms what we’ve said all along: that this was a set-up of the bishop that was engineered by Salas’ lawyer, who was hired 18 months before the end of the physical relationship.

He said he was forced to have sex, but his lawyer allowed him to continue. If I have a client who this is being done to, I’m not going to sit back and not do anything. Not only did she not call the authorities, but she arranged for him to be bugged, sent him into the bishop’s home, and sat outside in a car while her client was supposedly being abused. This is beyond belief. If she truly felt that some force was going on, they would have contacted authorities right away. A lawyer is morally and ethically prevented from sitting back while her client’s being thrown to a wolf. Irma Cordova [did] this just so she can get money from a lawsuit.

Cordova was contacted to respond to these and other allegations, but repeated calls were not returned.

No one with credibility

In November the police and district attorney announced that they would not press criminal charges against Bishop Ziemann, “because the victim lacked credibility.” “However,” said Santa Rosa police chief Mike Dunbaugh, “the district attorney and I both agree that crimes were committed.”

“What crimes took place?” the chief was asked. “Sexual assault, for starters,” Dunbaugh responded; “and we’ll just leave it in that general category.” So were it not for the highly questionable character of Salas, would the district attorney have charged Patrick Ziemann with a crime? “I have no doubt,” the police chief answers.

The bishop’s attorney puts a different interpretation on the facts—although it is not one that casts Ziemann in a terribly favorable light. Adrienne Moran says:

What Dunbaugh has said in the press is that at the very least he thought this was a sexual harassment problem. Certainly if a crime was committed they would have pressed charges. Secondly, whether or not it’s sexual harassment, it was welcome conduct. It was a consensual affair. Salas’s testimony confirms that, because neither he or his attorney acted in a way that someone acting against their will would act.

More bad news still to come?

Not surprisingly, this rapid-fire series of scandals left many Santa Rosa parishioners enraged at the bishop, at Msgr. Keys, at Father Salas. “We’ve been lied to, manipulated, and deceived,” said Father John Martin of St. Anthony Church in Mendocino. “There is zero trust.”

Father Dennis O’Sullivan, pastor of St. Rose, pointed out that the loss of funds deposited with the diocese had a devastating impact on his own parish, which had been saving for a school building. “We’d been working on it for 12 years, and had just signed a contract to start building,” he observed. “Some of the money was from school kids who’d saved up their money.”

Others were more outraged by the bishop’s involvement in a homosexual affair. “Ziemann sat right in front of me and said he would not put up with any sexual misconduct among his priests,” St. Anthony parishioner John Ruprecht said. “I was totally taken in by the guy. He was a total hypocrite, and a very good liar.”

During a public forum conducted by Archbishop Levada in Ukiah, Sid Mauer asked Levada, “Why aren’t these people in jail?”

Others were more forgiving. “This has been very sad and frustrating,” says Sam Crump of Sebastapol. “Unfortunately, it reminds us we’re all sinners and every day we need to commit ourselves to being better.”

Some people, furthermore, believe the worst is not over for the Diocese of Santa Rosa. “We haven’t heard the last of this,” says Tom Economus, executive director of Linkup, an advocacy group for victims of clerical sexual abuse. Economus says that the diocese has a reputation as “a dumping ground” for problem priests. “I know for a fact that other cases will come forward,” he says. “There are other priests who will be named soon.”

Economus is not alone in that belief. “Past bishops were very ready to bring in and incardinate other priests,” says Sister Kelly—although she adds: “but ‘dumping ground’ is a little strong.” She agrees, however, that more scandals will eventually come to light:

I’m reluctant to say anything. I gave names to the archbishop. The only way I can find if he’s doing anything about it is if they’ve been dismissed.

Fresh starts

Absent any new charges, however, there are some hopes that the diocese may finally be starting to come out from under its cloud. “I think we’re through the era of disbelief and anger, and are starting to rebuild,” says Msgr. Brenkle, the acting financial officer.

Toward this end, Bishop Ziemann asked for a letter to be read during all Masses on April 9, 2000. In it he expressed his “most profound sorrow for the pain I have caused this diocese, both because of my failure to abide by my sacred vows and also because of my failure regarding the management of diocesan funds.” The disgraced bishop said: “I acknowledge with deep regret my responsibility for the current state of affairs about which you are justly angry.”

Ziemann acknowledged, “I have hurt you all deeply and I humbly ask for your forgiveness.” But he also admonished his former flock: “I urge you not to lose faith in God or in your Church because of me.” He closed by writing, “I pray that God will heal the wounds I have caused in the Church of Santa Rosa.”

The Tuesday after that letter was released, the Vatican announced the appointment of Bishop Daniel F. Walsh to head the Santa Rosa diocese. Bishop Walsh, a native of San Francisco, was serving as head of the Las Vegas, Nevada diocese at the time of the appointment. Ordained in 1963, he had served as vicar general and then auxiliary bishop of the San Francisco archdiocese under Archbishop John Quinn. He was appointed the bishop of the Reno-Las Vegas diocese, which then spanned all of Nevada, in 1987. When that state was divided into two dioceses in 1995, Walsh was named the first bishop of Las Vegas. The US bishop’s conference said that the Holy See chose Walsh for the Santa Rosa assignment because he was both an outsider and someone known and respected by diocesan priests. A statement from the episcopal conference also said that Bishop Walsh was known for his “financial acumen.”

“I’m anxious to get to know the priests and people of Santa Rosa and to listen to them,” Bishop Walsh said. “God speaks to us through his people, the Church, and we have to listen to them to find out what their hopes and expectations are.” He acknowledged one major challenge in his new assignment:

We have to restore credibility to the office of bishop, and that’s going to take time and patience and that sort of thing. It’s a process we’ll have to go through, but mainly we’ll have to listen.

Walsh was installed as the sixth bishop of Santa Rosa in May. Just over one month earlier, the diocese announced that it had reached a settlement with Salas. Under the agreement, the priest would receive $535,000 in exchange for resigning from his ministry in Santa Rosa. The diocese and Ziemann had wanted him to resign from the priesthood altogether, but Salas refused.

“The settlement document specifically states that the diocese and Ziemann admit no liability to Salas, but rather that the payment of funds is solely for the purpose of settlement,” said diocesan lawyer Paul Gaspari. In a joint statement, Gaspari and Salas’s attorney Jeff Gibson said, “We obviously disagree on the merits of this case. However, each side recognizes the legal complexities involved, the pain already imposed on the Catholic community by the issues in this case, and the need to bring the matter to a close and move on.”

Many Catholics in Santa Rosa were dismayed to learn that Salas would not be defrocked. However, according to Phil Gray, canon lawyer and vice president of Catholics United for the Faith in Steubenville, Ohio, laicizing a priest is not something that can be done overnight. “There is a procedure for defrocking a priest in canon law, and it requires following that procedure before the removal from the clerical state can be done,” he says, adding:

You have to prove a crime was committed and that removal from the clerical state is the necessary penalty for that crime. And remember, the primary purpose of the penalties of the Church is to bring people back into the fold so they can fully live the Christian life as God has called them to live that.

So who was at fault in the scandals that involved Salas and Bishop Ziemann? Was their affair truly consensual? Did it last two years, or had it gone on for longer than that? Did Ziemann blackmail Salas in return for his silence on the Ukiah theft, or did Salas really “set up” Bishop Ziemann?

Sister Kelly has no doubt that Salas manipulated the bishop. “I do believe Jorge set him up,” she says. “You’ve got a smooth operator there. He can turn on tears like you and I turn on the faucet.”

A diocesan priest is not so sure. “Neither one of them is credible,” he says.

For the people of the Diocese of Santa Rosa, the question of who was most at fault is immaterial, because ultimately they are the victims. “Ultimately, we can’t spend our time worrying about what’s happened,” says parishioner Crump. “We’re better off if we remain faithful people and families.”

Brian O’Neel is a free-lance writer based in California.

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