Since publication of my story, Blood Ivory: Ivory Worship Catholic Church leaders in Cebu have called me a liar and have suggested I be declared persona non grata for exposing Msgr. Cristobal Garcia’s past and his encouragement of smuggling by those who want ivory religious icons.

Here is the man they defend:

Father Cristobal Garcia: Priest fled to the Philippines and rose in the Church

By Dana Bartholomew, Staff Writer

January 29, 2013

Father Vincent Serpa, pastor of St. Dominic Catholic Church in Eagle Rock, knew he had a problem with Father Cristobal Garcia. He just didn’t know how big.

“A family came to him to report that the associate, Father Cristobal Garcia, was involved in giving cocaine to minors in the parish,” said then-Monsignor Thomas Curry, vicar of clergy for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, in a 1988 confidential memo to then-Archbishop Roger M. Mahony, three years after the incident.

“To see if he could find any evidence of this, Father Serpa went into Garcia’s room while he was celebrating Mass and found…Read More

As Court records indicate, Church leaders knew of Garcia’s risk to children from the mid 1980s.  This 1988 LA Times article certainly served notice.

Here are a few more stories worth looking at to get a sense of the coverup in Los Angeles.  The trafficking of ivory and the killing of elephants does not compare in its horror to the harming of children.  If the Church is willing to cover up the former, how reliable are their promises on the latter…

The release of confidential files on 1980s clergy sex abuse in the Los Angeles Archdiocese is the beginning of the end of a long and sordid saga.

January 23, 2013

For years, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles fought to keep secret its confidential files concerning pedophile priests. Hundreds of sex abuse victims hoping for a full accounting of what church leaders knew about the growing scandal and what they did to stop it were rebuffed time and again.

But the cover-up is finally coming to an end. On Monday, a series of memos and letters filed in a civil case confirmed that Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other church leaders plotted to shield pedophile priests rather than turn them over to police and prosecutors.

The documents, which date to 1986 and 1987, show how Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, his top advisor on sex abuse cases, discussed strategies to keep priests from coming to the attention of law enforcement….

Los Angeles Archdiocese kept sexual abuse in the shadows, Daily News Los Angeles

Church protected priests accused of child molesting

 

Thousands of pages of court documents show how the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for decades knowingly shielded more than a dozen priests suspected of child sex abuse.

A Los Angeles News Group special report offers an in-depth look into how and when the church knew about the abuse and chose instead to move accused priests from parish to parish, even allowing the most abusive to move out of the country….