Louisiana Voice

The New Orleans Archdiocese dodged a major bullet last week when retired priest Lawrence Hecker unexpectedly entered a guilty plea to charges of child rape and kidnapping just as the case against him was set to go to trial.

The guilty plea, which carries a mandatory life sentence for the 93-year-old former priest, saves the Catholic Church the embarrassment of a lengthy – and well-publicized – criminal trial that was almost certain to expose a long-standing practice by the archdiocese of protecting predatory priests – and the church – from prosecution for sexually assaulting minor children.

A jury would have heard, for instance, and the public would have learned, that when the then-16-year-old victim reported the rape at the hands of Hecker to his principal, it was not Hecker, but the boy who received the brunt of the church’s punishment.

It was in 1975 and Hecker had hired the teen to help set up masses at the St. Theresa the Little Flower church in New Orleans. One day, when the boy was working out in a gym, Hecker purported to teach him some wrestling moves. The priest subsequently stood behind the boy and put him in a chokehold.

The victim said he felt Hecker rape him before he lost consciousness. Upon awakening, he noticed that the back of his shorts were wet. He later told his mother about the rape. He also told his school principal, Paul Calamari, and that’s when his troubles were taken to another level.

Instead of punishing Hecker, Calamari admonished the boy and told his mother that the teen needed to seek therapy because of his “anger issues and fantasy stories” or face expulsion. He chose therapy which he thinks was paid for by the church. But he also learned that he was not alone.

Another boy told of taking a walk with Hecker in a wooded area outside New Orleans. He said the priest put him in a wrestling hold and began trying to rape him. Only when another child suddenly approached did Hecker abandon his efforts and stroll away as if nothing had happened.

Ironically, years later when that same boy married, it was Hecker who performed the ceremony because Hecker was close to the bride’s family.

Nearly a quarter-century later, in 1999, Hecker admitted in writing to church leaders that he had molested or sexually harassed several other boys he had met through his ministry and as a volunteer with the Boy Scouts. The archdiocese’s response? He was allowed to return to work until he retired several years later – with full benefits.

The courts attempted to do their part in protecting the church by sealing all documents but the ever-resourceful GUARDIAN, a United Kingdom publication, and the publication’s New Orleans writer, Ramon Vargas, in June 2023 managed to obtain a copy of that 1999 admission by Hecker and all hell broke loose.

So now, the public won’t hear the story of what four New Orleans archbishops knew about child sex abuse or how long had they known it and attempted to cover up the scandal. Some of those answers were contained in leaked testimony from a 2020 DEPOSITION given by Hecker.

The indisputable truth that has emerged in all of this is that the New Orleans Archdiocese would rather continue to pay legal and professional fees, now totaling more than $41 million and counting, in its attempts to PROTECT more than a billion dollars in property, buildings and jewels than to see that some measure of justice is accorded some 550 claimed victims of brutality at the hands of God’s servants.

Below are some of the archdiocese’s property. Scroll down to page 182 for the itemized listings.

So, now with the Hecker criminal matter disposed of, the lawyers can direct their full attention to crunching the numbers to see who pays what to whom.

It’s literally taken years to get to this point when the church could have opened itself to transparency long ago and expedited the cleansing process.

But then again, it may not be that easy. The New Orleans Archdiocese may not be stalling the process to protect the New Orleans Archdiocese.

After all, the one-time archbishop of Buenos Aires (1992-2013), JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO, who also once served as president of the Argentine Bishops’ Conference, once boasted that he never encountered any abusive priests when in fact, more than 100 Buenos Aires archdiocesan priests sexually abused children from 1950 to 2013.

The former Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio is now known to the world as Pope Francis.