Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2023
Clergy sexual violence in immigrant communities is an understudied dimension of the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic church. Yet records suggest that bishops regularly treated immigrant-serving parishes as dumping grounds for serially abusive clergy. There, evidence suggests, abusers targeted minors from poor, vulnerable, and undocumented families, silencing victims with threats of deportation and further violence. How did legal status intersect with structures of state and ecclesial power and with social hierarchies of visibility in situations of clergy abuse? Centering the case of Msgr. Peter E. Garcia, a priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles who abused at least twenty boys between 1966 and 1987, this article examines archival evidence from unsealed clergy personnel files to interrogate the complex politics of documentation in the case. It attends to the relationship between three interwoven forms of (un)documentation: first, the precarious legal and social status of victims; second, the silences, redactions, and euphemisms that characterize church records containing these accounts; and third, the spatial undocumentation at work in the use of migrant parishes as clergy dumping grounds. It demonstrates how a post–Vatican II theological and pastoral imagination of intimacy with the poor, refracted through prisms of state, ecclesial, and clerical dominance, helped to create conditions for the production of invisible victims. The erasure accomplished through the overlapping forms of undocumentation in the Garcia case, it argues, can help to account for the absence of such stories from the broader narrative of Catholic clergy sexual abuse in the United States.
1 Initial reports refer to the young man as twenty years old, though a follow-up memo clarifies that he was to turn twenty the following week. Msgr. Kane, “Memoranda Re: Call from Sister Manuela,” November 7, 1984, Garcia, Peter Edward Clergy Personnel File, BishopAccountability.org, https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2013/01_02/Exhibit54Original.pdf (hereafter, Garcia Clergy File, BA).
2 Msgr. Tom Kane to Archbishop Hickey, Memorandum, November 6, 1984, Garcia Clergy File, BA.
3 This description of Garcia appears throughout his file, including “Case: (Redacted) (victim) Fr. Peter Garcia (Perpetrator): Interview March 26, 2005 at 10:30 a.m. in the office of (Redacted),” Garcia Clergy File, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles (RCALA). The individual and his brothers were victimized by Garcia from 1975–1977 while students at St. Stephen Martyr School in Monterey Park, CA.
4 Kane to Hickey, 1.
5 Kane to Hickey, 2.
6 The most complete assignment record for Garcia is included in the paperwork sent to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as part of the case for Garcia's laicization, November 15, 2004. This record includes assignments in both Los Angeles and New Mexico. Garcia Clergy File, RCALA.
7 Garcia's abuse likely started prior to his ordination. An initial psychiatric report from Foundation House in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, reports that Garcia also admitted to touching a sixth grader while teaching catechism class as a seminarian. Director (Servants of the Paraclete, Name Redacted) to Cardinal Timothy Manning, February 18, 1985, 3, Garcia Clergy File, BA. The twenty-victim estimate is found in Curry to Mahony, Memorandum Re: Visit to Jemez Springs, May 3, 1987, Fr. Peter Garcia File—Anthony Demarco Release, January 21, 2013, 325, https://www.bishop-accountability.org/docs/los_angeles_1/peter_garcia/LAARCH_018_318_to_319.pdf. See also Saint Luke Institute Medical Director (name redacted) to Most Reverend Roger Mahony, “Re: Monsignor Peter Garcia, SLI #11683,” October 7, 1987, Garcia Clergy File, BA; and Memorandum by Msgr. Timothy Dyer for Peter Garcia Clergy File, November 1, 1993, Garcia Clergy File, RCALA.
8 Saint Luke Institute Medical Director (name redacted) to Most Reverend Roger Mahony, “Re: Monsignor Peter Garcia, SLI #11683,” October 7, 1987, Garcia Clergy File, BA.
9 Servants of the Paraclete, Foundation House, Jemez Springs, New Mexico 87025, “Monsignor Peter Garcia, Psychological Evaluation and Testing Report,” November 27, 1984, Garcia Clergy File, BA. Comparing this report with Garcia's assignment record suggests that the case of abuse that prompted this referral took place at St. Anthony Catholic Church in San Gabriel, where he spent only two months (January 1, 1980–March 12, 1980). He was moved to St. Alphonsus Catholic Church in Los Angeles (March 13, 1980–August 21, 1980), and then to St. Marcellinus in Commerce, where he remained as pastor until he was forced to resign (August 22, 1980–November 25, 1984).
10 William D. Perri, SP, cc: Most Rev Robert F. Sanchez, DD, Msgr. Peter Garcia, (Redacted), MD, to Most Rev. Roger Mahony, DD, March 24, 1987, 2–3, Garcia Clergy File, RCALA.
11 Archdiocese of Santa Fe, “List of Priests, Deacons, Religious, and Seminarians Accused of Sexual Abuse of Children in Other U.S. Dioceses Who Have Also Ministered/Worked in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe,” revised September 4, 2020, https://files.ecatholic.com/17613/documents/2020/9/200904SecondListAccusedinOtherDioceses.pdf?t=1599548791000. Garcia's name had not previously been included in public disclosures by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. See Tom Sharpe, “Letters Reveal Pedophile Priest Served at N.M. Parishes,” Santa Fe New Mexican, February 7, 2013, https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2013/01_02/2013_02_07_Sharpe_LettersReveal.htm.
12 Curry to Mahony, Memorandum Re: Visit to Jemez Springs, May 3, 1987, Fr. Peter Garcia File—Anthony De Marco Release, January 21, 2013, 325–26, https://www.bishop-accountability.org/docs/los_angeles_1/peter_garcia/LAARCH_018_318_to_319.pdf.
13 William D. Perri, SP, to Most Rev. Roger Mahony, DD, March 12, 1987, Garcia Clergy File, RCALA.
14 Saint Luke Institute to Mahony, October 7, 1987, 3.
15 See Holscher, Kathleen, “The Trouble of an Indian Diocese: Catholic Priests and Sexual Abuse in Colonized Places,” in Religion and US Empire, ed. Wenger, Tisa and Johnson, Sylvester (New York: NYU Press, 2022), 231–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kathleen Holscher, “Colonialism and the Crisis Inside the Crisis of Catholic Sexual Abuse,” Religion Dispatches, August 27, 2018, https://rewirenewsgroup.com/religion-dispatches/2018/08/27/from-pa-to-new-mexico-colonialism-and-the-crisis-inside-the-crisis-of-catholic-sexual-abuse/; and Jack Lee Downey, Colonialism Is Abuse: Reconsidering Triumphalist Narratives in Catholic Studies,” American Catholic Studies 130, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 16–20. See also Lajimodiere, Denise K., Stringing Rosaries: The History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of Northern Plains American Indian Boarding School Survivors (Fargo: North Dakota State University Press, 2019)Google Scholar. On abuse in Jesuit missions in Alaska, see Tom Curran and Mark Trahent, “The Silence,” Frontline (April 19, 2011): https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-silence/timeline/; and Lisa Derner, “Jesuit Abuse Settlement Aims to Heal,” Anchorage Daily News, November 20, 2007, http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2007/11_12/2007_11_20_Demer_JesuitAbuse.htm.
16 See, for example, Joseph Chinnici's account of the Franciscan Friars of Santa Barbara in When Values Collide: The Catholic Church, Sexual Abuse, and the Challenges of Leadership (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2010); O'Neill, Kevin Lewis, “The Unmaking of a Pedophilic Priest: Transnational Clerical Sexual Abuse in Guatemala,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 64, no. 2 (2020): 745–69Google Scholar; and Tim Sullivan, “A US Priest, A Philippine Village, and Decades of Secrecy,” Associated Press, September 9, 2019, https://apnews.com/article/philippines-us-news-ap-top-news-international-news-crime-e8c2209aa8144b6c9bc637cb264dcf79.
17 See, for example, Aaron Schrank, “How A SoCal Priest Preyed on Two Brothers and Destroyed an Immigrant Family,” LAist, October 26, 2018, https://laist.com/news/survivor-of-catholic-churchs-child-sex-abuse-scandal-calls-for-accountability-in-la; Aaron Schrank, “Immigrant Communities Were the ‘Geographic Solution’ to Predator Priests,” National Public Radio, November 8, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/11/08/665251345/immigrant-communities-were-the-geographic-solution-to-predator-priests; and J. D. Long-García, “Is There a Sexual Abuse Reckoning Coming for the Latino Church?” America, August 3, 2018, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/08/03/there-sexual-abuse-reckoning-coming-latino-church.
18 In 2003, spurred by the Boston Globe's “Spotlight” exposés, California lawmakers created a one-year suspension of statue-of-limitations laws for victims of child sexual abuse, known as a “lookback window.” In 2007, a $660 million legal settlement against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles representing 508 victims mandated the public release of internal records on priests accused of sexually abusing minors. The archdiocese took six years to comply with the settlement, finally releasing the files in 2013.
19 This version of the file, drawn from legal evidence, redacts names of victims, their families, and medical personnel, but beyond these redactions, it includes full text of most documents. It also includes dozens of documents left out of the Archdiocesan disclosure, including many in which chancery authorities correspond internally about potential legal culpability and the need to keep Garcia out of state. This file contains, in error, an unredacted mention of a victim's name. I will not use it here. I am indebted to Terence McKiernan for his ongoing work in maintaining this unparalleled archive of clergy files, news reports, legal documents, and other records related to the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
20 While such accounts are too numerous to name, certain cases serve to illustrate larger patterns. In addition to Garcia, priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles known to have targeted immigrant youth for abuse include Michael Baker (ordained 1974), Carlos Rodriguez (ordained 1986), and Fernando Lopez (ordained 2000). Similar accounts exist in dioceses throughout the United States. In the Archdiocese of Miami, Fr. Ernesto Garcia-Rubio (ordained 1963) abused Salvadoran and Nicaraguan refugee boys and other male teenage immigrants, and was sent for a time to Cuba, Colombia, and Honduras. In the Diocese of Dallas, Fr. Justin Joseph Lucio (ordained 1972) was assigned to unsupervised ministry at Casita Maria, an organization dedicated to assisting undocumented immigrants, after being accused in 1989 of abusing immigrant youths. In the Texas borderland diocese of Brownsville, nearly half of credibly accused priests were ordained elsewhere and were “dumped” on immigrant parishes in the poor, remote diocese. Crucially, the intentional targeting of vulnerable immigrant youth was not limited to the West and Southwest. In the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, for example, Rev. Adam Prochaski (ordained 1968) abused hundreds of girls at Holy Cross parish and school in Queens, many of them Polish immigrants whose families Prochaski had helped bring to the United States.
21 Levy, Inna and Eckhaus, Eyal, “Rape Narratives Analysis through Natural Language Processing: Survivor Self-Label, Narrative Time Span, Faith, and Rape Terminology,” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 12, no. 6 (2020): 635–42CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
22 Clites, Brian J., “A Theology of Voice: VOCAL and the Catholic Clergy Abuse Survivor Movement,” U.S. Catholic Historian 40, no. 1 (Winter 2022): 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Boyle, Kaitlin M. and Rogers, Kimberly B., “Beyond the Rape ‘Victim’–‘Survivor’ Binary: How Race, Gender, and Identity Processes Interact to Shape Distress,” Sociological Forum 35, no. 2 (February 18, 2020): 323–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jordan, Jan, “From Victim to Survivor—and from Survivor to Victim: Reconceptualising the Survivor Journey,” Sexual Abuse in Australia and New Zealand 5, no. 2 (December 2013): 48–56Google Scholar.
24 Reed-Sandoval, Amy, Socially Undocumented: Identity and Immigration Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 81ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 Reed-Sandoval, Socially Undocumented, 7.
26 The 2011 John Jay study on the causes of clergy sexual abuse noted that, because priests often function as father figures in families, certain similarities exist between clergy sexual abuse and intrafamiliar sexual abuse. See Karen J. Terry et al., “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950–2010: A Report Presented to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops by the John Jay College Research Team” (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), 22. On how dependence in intimate relationships leaves undocumented immigrants “stuck,” see Derby, Joanna, Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 57–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 This cultivation of familial trust is a through-line in the testimony of multiple victims and their families in Garcia's personnel file. See, for example, the interview transcript attached to “Archdiocese of Los Angeles Child Abuse and Neglect Non-Mandatory Reporting Form,” March 26, 2005, documenting multiple incidents of abuse in 1975–1977; Memorandum, Msgr. Timothy Dyer, November 1, 1993, Garcia Clergy File, RCALA. The memo details a report of abuse of multiple sons from one family dating back to the early 1970s.
28 This victim, who was abused around age ten, came forward in 1992 at age twenty-two.
29 Garcia to (redacted, mother of victim), August 28, 1975, Garcia Clergy File, BA; Saint Luke Institute to Mahony, October 7, 1987, 3; and “Accusations against the Cleric,” in documentation sent to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as part of the case for Garcia's laicization, November 15, 2004; Meeting with (illegible), (Redacted), Curry, Father, Mother, (Redacted), Uncle, (Redacted) child of Mr. and Mrs. (Redacted),” August 31, 1988, 10 a.m., Garcia Clergy File, BA.
30 See, for example, David Becerra, M. Alex Wagaman, David Androff, et al., “Policing Immigrants: Fear of Deportations and Perceptions of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice,” Journal of Social Work 17, no. 6 (2017): 715–31; Menjívar, Cecilia, Simmons, William Paul, Alvord, Daniel, and Valdez, Elizabeth Salerno, “Immigration Enforcement, The Racialization of Legal Status, and Perceptions of the Police: Latinos in Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Phoenix in Comparative Perspective,” Du Bois Review 15, no. 1 (2018): 107–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nik Theodore and Robert Habans, “Policing Immigrant Communities: Latino Perceptions of Police Involvement in Immigration Enforcement, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42, no. 6 (2016): 970–88.
31 It should be acknowledged that, among U.S. citizens, power disparities based on race and class also shape access to the justice system. Undocumented migrants are not alone in their lack of access to the legal system, but the profound level of risk involved in coming forward is unique in their situations. In addition, race, class, country of origin, and other factors also shape the treatment of undocumented migrants by law enforcement.
32 Devlin Barrett, “DHS: Immigration Agents May Arrest Crime Victims, Witnesses at Courthouses,” Washington Post (April 4, 2017).
33 Crisma, Micaela, Bascelli, Elisabetta, Paci, Daniela, and Romito, Patrizia, “Adolescents Who Experienced Sexual Abuse: Fears, Needs and Impediments to Disclosure,” Child Abuse and Neglect 28 (2004): 1035–48CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also Ahrens, Courtney E., Rios-Mandel, Laura Carolina, Isas, Libier, del Carmen Lopez, Maria, “Talking about Interpersonal Violence: Cultural Influences on Latinas’ Identification and Disclosure of Sexual Assault and Intimate Partner Violence,” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 2, no. 4 (2010): 284, 288–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Frye, Marilyn, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1983), 4Google Scholar.
35 Most Rev. Roger Mahony to Mr. Antonio H. Rodriguez, October 7, 1985, Garcia Clergy File, BA.
36 J. J. Brandlin to Mr. Antonio H. Rodriguez, November 27, 1985, Garcia Clergy File, BA.
37 Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, “Preface: From the Bayou to Boston: History of a Scandal,” in Predatory Priests, Silenced Victims: The Sexual Abuse Crisis and the Catholic Church, ed. Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea and Virginia Goldner (London: Routledge, 2016), xii.
38 Considered as a whole, documents in Garcia's file convey an overarching sense of what philosopher Kate Manne calls himpathy, “the excessive sympathy shown toward male perpetrators of sexual violence.” See Manne, Kate, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.
39 See Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Policies,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989).
40 For example, Mexican and Mexican American cultural attitudes toward the priesthood would have shaped power dynamics in this case. On one hand, Mexicano Catholicism is often associated with an elevated view of clerical superiority. Perhaps Garcia would have been acting not only out of his own clerical conditioning but also with a strategic awareness of the exalted status of clergy within Mexicano religiosity and thus in the eyes of his victims’ mothers. At the same time, as theologian Allan Figueroa Deck points out, many Latinas/os approach clericalism from a distinctive extrainstitutional vantage point. In Latinx Catholic communities, popular religion has historically functioned as a counterdynamic to the clerical monopoly over religious power in Latinx Catholic communities. In general, Deck argues, Latinx Catholics are less focused on the institutional church than Euro-American Catholics tend to be. Abuses of power by clergy, then, are viewed less as institutional failings or legal matters and more as family issues. See Deck, Allan Figueroa, “Latino Migrations and the Transformation of Religion in the United States: Framing the Question,” in Christianities in Migration: The Global Perspective, ed. Phan, Peter C. and Padilla, Elaine (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 265Google Scholar; and Espín, Orlando, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997)Google Scholar. See also Deck's explanation of this dynamic in Soli Salgado and Maria Benevento, “Culture Plays Role in US Hispanics’ Muted Response to Abuse Crisis,” National Catholic Reporter, November 13, 2018, https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/culture-plays-role-us-hispanics-muted-response-abuse-crisis.
41 Garcia to Manning, cc. Arzube, May 9, 1985, 2, Garcia Personnel File, BA.
42 Garcia to Sanchez, April 1, 1987, Garcia Clergy File, BA.
43 Saint Luke Institute to Mahony, October 7, 1987, 3.
44 Saint Luke Institute to Mahony, October 7, 1987; Servants of the Paraclete, “Monsignor Peter Garcia, Psychological Evaluation and Testing Report,” November 27, 1984.
45 Kane to Hickey, 2.
46 Memorandum, “Re: Archbishop Hickey's Memorandum to Card. Manning,” November 16, 1984, Garcia Clergy File Supplement, BA.
47 Kane to Hickey, 2; “Memoranda Re: Call from Sister Manuela,” November 7, 1984, Garcia Clergy File Supplement, BA.
48 See, for example, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950–2002 (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2004), 66, 74–75; and Noll, Douglas E. and Harvey, Linda, “Restorative Mediation: The Application of Restorative Justice Practice and Philosophy to Clergy Sexual Abuse Cases,” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 17, no. 3–4 (2008): 377–96CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
49 Redacted (Clinical Psychologist), “Confidential Client Information, Re: Monsignor Peter Garcia,” February 4, 1989, 6, Garcia Clergy File, RCALA.
50 “Meeting with (illegible), (Redacted).”
51 “Meeting with (illegible), (Redacted),” 2: Mrs. (Redacted): “We don't want them to take Fr. Garcia ‘prisoner.’ We see priests, even Fr. Garcia, as servants of God. We just don't want Fr. Garcia in the area because (Redacted) is very upset when he is aware of Fr. Garcia being around. We want (Redacted) to be helped.”
Mrs. (Redacted): “If Fr. Garcia is reported, we will testify for mercy.”
52 Reed-Sandoval, Socially Undocumented, 8.
53 Kane, “Memorandum to Archbishop Hickey,” November 6, 1984; Kane, “Memoranda Re: Call from Sister Manuela,” November 7, 1984; “Meeting with (illegible), (Redacted),” August 31, 1988; Memorandum from Monsignor Timothy Dyer, November 1, 1993; “Case: (Redacted) (victim) Fr. Peter Garcia (Perpetrator), March 26, 2005.”
54 John P. McNicholas to Alix Evans, Esq., June 3, 1992, 1, Garcia Clergy File, BA.
55 Brian J. Clites, “A Theology of Voice”; Clites, “Soul Murder: Sketches of Survivor Imaginaries,” Exchange 48 (2019): 268–79; and Clites, “Our Accountability to Survivors,” American Catholic Studies 130, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 4–7.
56 The earliest use of the term dumping ground to refer specifically to a place where sexually deviant clergy are transferred that I have encountered is in an 1898 essay in The Atlantic about the poor state of religiosity in Montana. The term's racialized associations are evident in this early account: “The denominations have made Montana their ministerial ash-heap and dumping-ground. Upon it they have flung their outcast clergy—vicious men, disgraced men, renegades of all shades and colors. In Sapphira, . . . Chinamen, Indians, and ministers rank about alike.” Rollin Lynde Hartt, “The Montanians,” The Atlantic 81 (1898): 739. The term geographic solution, now widely used, was coined by legal expert and clergy abuse victim advocate Patrick J. Wall in the early 2000s. See Patrick J. Wall (blog), November 7, 2019, https://patrickjwall.wordpress.com/2019/11/07/geographic-solution/.
57 On Alaska, see Tom Curran and Mark Trahent, “The Silence,” Frontline, April 19, 2011, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-silence/timeline/; and Lisa Derner, “Jesuit Abuse Settlement Aims to Heal,” Anchorage Daily News, November 20, 2007, http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2007/11_12/2007_11_20_Demer_JesuitAbuse.htm. On Gallup, see Holscher, “The Trouble of an Indian Diocese: Catholic Priests and Sexual Abuse in Colonized Places,” and “The Catholic Anatomy of a Dumping Ground: Thinking Across the Catholic-ness and the Coloniality of Sexual Abuse in Indian Country,” public address, Gonzaga University, April 1, 2022. On Santa Fe, see Holscher, “Colonialism and the Crisis Inside the Crisis of Catholic Sexual Abuse.” On Great Falls-Billings, see Seaborn Larson, “Montana Reservations Reportedly ‘Dumping Grounds’ for Predatory Priests,” Great Falls Tribune, August 16, 2017, https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2017/08/16/montanas-reservations-were-dumping-grounds-predatory-priests-suit-alleges/504576001/. On Honolulu, see James Dearie, “Honolulu Diocese Was a ‘Dumping Ground for Troubled Clerics,’ Abuse Report Says,” National Catholic Reporter, July 13, 2018, https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/honolulu-diocese-was-dumping-ground-troubled-clerics-abuse-report-says.
58 Jack Downey, “The Heretic Jim Poole, Asceticism and Abuse in the Alaskan Missions” (Gender, Sex, and Power: Towards a History of Clergy Sex Abuse in the U.S. Catholic Church, University of Notre Dame, March 28, 2022).
59 See, for example, Kanter, Deborah, “Making Mexican Parishes: Ethnic Succession in Chicago Churches, 1947–1977,” U.S. Catholic Historian 30, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 35–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 Reynolds, Susan Bigelow, People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023), 92–96Google Scholar, 104–107, 242 fn. 58.
61 Tia Noelle Pratt, “Liturgy as Identity Work in Predominately African American Parishes,” in American Parishes: Remaking Local Catholicism, ed. Gary Adler Jr., Tricia C. Bruce, and Brian Starks (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019), 144–45; Reynolds, Susan Bigelow, “‘This is Not Nostalgia’: Contesting the Politics of Sentimentality in Boston's 2004 Parish Closure Protests,” U.S. Catholic Historian 41, no. 1 (Winter 2023): 71–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 Garcia's file is at times explicit about the rationale for his transfers. In 1976, for example, the pastor of St. Polycarp in Stanton, California, where Garcia had been serving since the previous year, contacted the chancery with concerns about Garcia's conduct. Bishop Juan Arzube—also later accused of committing and covering up abuse—recommended Garcia be transferred to St. Francis X. Cabrini, another predominately Mexican American parish and school in South Los Angeles “because of the distance.” Instead, he was transferred even farther away to Holy Family in Glendale, forty miles north. Msgr. Rawden, Summary of St. Polycarp pastor report to Manning, March 9, 1976, Garcia Clergy File, RCALA.
63 It is important to note that, while archdiocesan records suggest that they first received an official report of Garcia's abuse in 1984, multiple victims testified to reporting Garcia to various church officials throughout the 1970s and 1980s, prompting his many assignment shifts.
64 Archdiocese of Santa Fe, List of Priests, Deacons, Religious, and Seminarians Accused of Sexual Abuse of Children, Rev. January 4, 2022, https://archdiosf.org/documents/2022/1/220104List%20of%20Priests%20Accused%20of%20Sexual%20Abuse-2.pdf.
65 Rebecca Moss, “Ex-treatment Center for Priests in Jemez Springs Sued,” Associated Press, May 17, 2019, https://apnews.com/article/0edfaa057d104b949038daf4554ab864.
66 Redacted (report from Msgr. Rawden, reporting for Manning) to Garcia, May 7, 1985, Garcia Clergy File, BA.
67 Perri to Mahony, March 12, 1987, 2, Garcia Clergy File, BA.
68 Curry to Mahony, Re: Visit to Jemez Springs, May 3, 1987, Garcia Clergy File, BA. Emphasis mine.
69 See “General Questions about Handling the Cases,” in “Clergy Files Produced by Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” Archdiocese of Los Angeles, accessed May 25, 2022, https://clergyfiles.la-archdiocese.org/listing.html.
70 Holscher, “Colonialism and the Crisis Inside the Crisis of Catholic Sexual Abuse,” and Holscher, “The Catholic Anatomy of a Dumping Ground.”
71 Holscher, “The Catholic Anatomy of a Dumping Ground,” and Holscher, “The Trouble of an Indian Diocese.”
72 Elliott, Dyan, The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal, and the Medieval Clergy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020)Google Scholar. In a 2004 petition to the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mahony cited scandal as a reason that Garcia should be laicized. See Mahony to Ratzinger, November 15, 2004, Bishops’ Votum.
73 While these represent distinct theological trajectories, their confluence in the post–Vatican II cultural turn is significant. For touchstone representations of these currents, see, on Latin American liberation theology, Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973); on the influence of the Latin American church on the development of Catholic Social Teaching, CELAM, The Documents of Medellín, 1968, and CELAM, the Documents of Puebla, 1979; and on inculturation, Pedro Arrupe, SJ, “On Inculturation, to the Whole Society,” Boston College Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, May 14, 1978, https://jesuitportal.bc.edu/research/documents/1978_arrupeinculturationsociety/; and Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB, Cultural Adaptation of the Liturgy (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982). On Catholic commitments to the Sanctuary Movement, see Martinez, Carlos Ruiz, “The Question of Sanctuary: The Adorers of the Blood of Christ and the U.S. Sanctuary Movement, 1983–1996,” U.S. Catholic Historian 38, no. 4 (Fall 2020): 53–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the commitments of the U.S. Bishops during this period, see NCCB, The Bishops Speak with the Virgin: A Pastoral Letter of the Hispanic Bishops of the United States (1982), and NCCB, The Hispanic Presence: Challenge and Commitment (1983).
74 Paredes, Mario J., The History of the National Encuentros: Hispanic Americans in the One Catholic Church (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2014)Google Scholar.
75 See, for example, Elizondo, Virgilio, Galilean Journey: The Mexican-American Promise (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983)Google Scholar.
76 See, for example, the Roxbury Apostolate in the Archdiocese of Boston, which in 1964 called on priests to submit applications to serve “Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and others” living in Boston's inner cities. Reynolds, People Get Ready, 96–107; and Reynolds, Susan Bigelow, “Solidarity as Slow Conversion,” Missiology 51, no. 1 (January 2023): 31–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
77 Clergy Assignment Record (Detailed), Mr. Peter E. Garcia, Clergy Personnel File, Rev. Peter Garcia, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2013/01_02/GarciaPeter.pdf.
78 El Visitante Dominical, published by Our Sunday Visitor. Résumé, Reverend Peter E. Garcia, 1, Garcia Clergy File, BA.
79 Résumé, Reverend Peter E. Garcia; cf. Paredes, The History of the National Encuentros; Luis A. Tampe, Encuentro Nacional Hispano de Pastoral (1972–1985): An Historical and Ecclesiological Analysis (PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, 2014), 208, 209, 219 fn88. Curiously, primary documents from the Encuentro process refer to him as Rev. Pedro Garcia, a name that does not appear anywhere else in his record. Triangulating his role as Secretary to the Region XI Commission for the Spanish Speaking during those years—a role that is stated in his clergy file résumé and in Encuentro histories—and mentions of his appearance at the forty-first International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia in 1976 allows us to be sure that “Rev. Pedro Garcia” refers to the same Peter E. Garcia. As far as I can tell, this is the first analysis to make this connection.
80 “The Program Exchange,” Journal of Continuing Higher Education 28, no. 2 (1980): 25–27.
81 United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Hearings before the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Religious Accommodation (1978), 169. Garcia testified during the Los Angeles phase of the hearings held on April 18, 1978.
82 This analysis follows an overarching theme in borderland, postcolonial, and Latinx literatures, of irreconcilable contradictions stemming from histories of conquest and colonization. Gloria Anzaldúa describes these contradictions, symbolized by the border itself, as una herida abierta, an open wound, but, drawing on José Vasconcelos, maintains the possibility for future transformation in mestizaje, the synthesis of these contradictions. Initial theological adoptions of mestizaje, as in the work of Elizondo, went further, claiming mestizaje as a symbol of reconciliation. Nestor Medina has critiqued this view, arguing that cultural, ethnic, and geographical legacies of conquest cannot be covered over by idealized, universalized synthesis. Contradictions remain. It should be noted that Elizondo himself arguably embodied the very contradiction his work helps to illuminate. A legendary pastoral leader and theologian, especially for the Hispanic Catholic community in San Antonio, in May 2015 Elizondo was named in a lawsuit by a man who reported that, as a boy, Elizondo kissed and fondled him when he went to Elizondo in 1983 to report abuse by another priest. Elizondo vigorously denied the accusation. He died by suicide the following year, leaving a painful and ambiguous legacy. See José Vasconcelos, La Raza Cosmica, bilingual edition (Los Angeles: California State University, 1979 [1925]); Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987); Virgilio P. Elizondo, The Future Is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet, rev. ed. (Louisville: University Press of Colorado, 2000); and Medina, Nestor, Mestizaje: Remapping Race, Culture, and Faith in Latina/o Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2009)Google Scholar.
83 Here I am referencing the question that Robert A. Orsi has posed to scholars studying clergy sexual abuse: “What is Catholic about clergy sexual abuse?” See Orsi, History and Presence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 216; and Orsi, “The Study of Religion on the Other Side of Disgust,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2019, https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/the-study-of-religion-on-the-other-side-of-disgust/.
84 I am grateful to Lucila Crena for this insight.
85 Haggerty, Kevin, “Tear Down the Walls: On Demolishing the Panopticon,” in Theorizing Surveillance, ed. Lyon, David (London: Willan, 2006), 29Google Scholar; cited by Schreiber, Rebecca M., The Undocumented Everyday: Migrant Lives and the Politics of Visibility (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 235CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
86 Tia Noelle Pratt, “Black Catholics, Racism, and the Sex Abuse Crisis: A Personal Reflection,” The Revealer, March 2, 2020, https://therevealer.org/black-catholics-racism-and-the-sex-abuse-crisis-a-personal-reflection/; Holscher, “Colonialism and the Crisis Inside the Crisis of Catholic Sexual Abuse.”
87 Examples of media accounts include William Lobdell, “Missionary's Dark Legacy,” Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2005, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-nov-19-me-alaska19-story.html; Michael Biesecker, “Guam's Ex-archbishop Shielded Culture of Clergy Sex Abuse,” Associated Press, August 9, 2019, https://apnews.com/b8442f05def44d1ea79b9e6805da4e0c; Michael Rezendes, “In Mississippi Delta, Catholic Abuse Cases Settled on Cheap,” Associated Press, August 27, 2019, https://apnews.com/d766d24d79f74e2ba1012358b47cb640; and Gary Fields, Juliet Linderman, and Wong Maye-E, “Church Offers Little Outreach to Minority Victims of Priests,” Associated Press, January 4, 2020, https://apnews.com/00a7a65248e88ccf3e9dcd2b6054bbdc.
88 See, for example, Thomas P. Doyle, “Clericalism and Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse,” in Predatory Priests, Silenced Victims, 16–24; and Katharine Westerhorstmann, “Contributions towards a Structural Analysis of the Catholic Abuse Crisis,” Church Life Journal, November 7, 2018, https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/contributions-towards-a-structural-analysis-of-the-catholic-abuse-crisis/.
89 Collins, Patricia Hill, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990): 221–38Google Scholar. See also Carbado, Devon W., Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams, Mays, Vicki M., and Tomlinson, Barbara, “Intersectionality: Mapping the Movements of a Theory,” Du Bois Review 10, no. 2 (2013), 304CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Policies,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 139 (1989). See also Edelman, Meredith, “An Unexpected Path: Bankruptcy, Justice and Intersecting Identities in the Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandals,” Australian Feminist Law Journal 41, no. 2 (2015): 271–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
90 See J. D. Long-García, “Is There a Sexual Abuse Reckoning Coming for the Latino Church?” America, August 3, 2018, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/08/03/there-sexual-abuse-reckoning-coming-latino-church.
