Disgraced former LA Cardinal Roger Mahony chosen to help seal Francis’ casket

[Stone]

Disgraced former LA Cardinal Roger Mahony chosen to help seal Francis’ casket
Mahony, 89, is widely considered to be one of the worst clerics of the past forty years,

 having been implicated in a massive sex abuse cover-up in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.



LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 25: Cardinal Roger Mahony leads Christmas mass at The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels December 25, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.
Eric Thayer / Getty Images

Apr 25, 2025
(LifeSiteNews) — Disgraced U.S. Cardinal Roger Mahony has been chosen to help seal Pope Francis’ casket for his funeral this weekend.

Mahony, 89, is widely considered to be one of the worst clerics in the U.S. over the past forty years. He served as the Archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 until 2011. As a result of his covering up of abuse, the archdiocese paid out more than $660 million to more than 500 victims over the course of his tenure.

Following his retirement, Mahony was scandalously allowed by Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez to participate in the archdiocese’s religious education conference in 2019.

Mahony took part in the 2019 installation Mass of former archbishop of Washington, D.C. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who was an acolyte of Theodore McCarrick, the former, now deceased, archbishop of Washington D.C. He also participated in the installation Mass of Archbishop Joe Vásquez in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston this March.

News of Mahony’s involvement in the ceremony was not well received by Catholics.

“Shame on him for participating in the public rite for Pope Francis, and shame on the College of Cardinals for allowing him to do so,” Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability.org, told the New York Post.

Author Peachy Keenan echoed those sentiments on X. “I will be boycotting the Pope’s funeral because the Vatican has chosen to include Cardinal Roger Mahony closely in the funeral ceremony. He is personally responsible for the mass rape of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of small boys in California and should be doing hard time in San Quentin, not frolicking in Rome. Shame on everyone involved in this travesty,” she remarked.

In 2013 a court demanded that some 12,000 pages related to Mahony’s time in office be released. The documents showed Mahony purposely concealed from the public knowledge of priests who had committed sex crimes with minors, and that he transferred the perpetrators after they received counseling only to have them sexually abuse again and again. The abuses were so severe that Gomez commented at the time, “the behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil.”

Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said that Mahony was chosen based on his seniority as a cardinal. But Mahony told ABC 7 News that he and Francis often communicated.

“He encouraged us to write to him,” Mahony said. “I don’t know if anybody else did, but I started writing to him, and he answers the letters. I have, I don’t know the final number, over 30 letters back from the pope, Pope Francis. He responds to them.”

Francis’ funeral will take place Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square. LifeSite’s Michael Haynes reports that a “small group of transsexuals” will attend. The coffin ceremony will take place Friday at 8pm in St. Peter’s as well. It will be overseen by Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, and will include Cardinals Pietro Parolin and Giovanni Battista Re, as well Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, among others.