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Bishop Knows Best

Patrick Ziemann's Cover-up

By George Neumayr

"Patrick Ziemann is a crook," says a former Vatican official, outraged at the former Santa Rosa bishop's financial mismanagement and homosexual affair with Father Jorge Hume, an embezzling priest under his supervision.

No one knows this better than the parishioners at St. Anthony's parish in Mendocino.

The Mission obtained a secret transcript of a March 7, 1999 meeting between Bishop Ziemann (formerly auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles) and concerned members of St. Anthony's parish in Mendocino. According to the transcript, Ziemann assured the parishioners that Father Hume -- the subject of repeated sexual assault charges -- was not "a homosexual," even as Ziemann was either "concluding or continuing" a homosexual affair with Hume, said one Santa Rosa Church observer.

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

Why hadn't Ziemann prosecuted Hume for embezzlement a few years earlier? demanded parishioners. Because of his "civil rights," explained Ziemann. "Our attorney said in no way [would our evidence] hold up in court. 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.

"My legal advisers said that confession would not hold up in court, because it was a confession that Father Hume made to Father Hans, the pastor, 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 advice of counsel."(A camera at the parish, installed precisely to catch Hume embezzling money, might have collected evidence, too, noted one parishioner. But Bishop Ziemann, it appears from the transcript, wasn't too impressed by that comment.)

"Even the professionals couldn't tell me if [Hume's alleged assaults] had happened or not," Bishop Ziemann asserted. "Some of them said it probably didn't happen because he's not of that propensity. So it was very complicated."

Ziemann stressed that after the embezzlement-and-assault scandal hit at the Ukiah parish Hume "was in therapy the whole time." Psychological screening, Ziemann assured the crowd, had improved greatly since his days in the pre-Vatican II seminary: "They get much better screening now than when I was in the
seminary. They get screened by psychologists and teams.... All of the pedophile allegations that have been proven true or at least very credible are cases that go back to the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Seminary training is far different now. Our society is very different now. You take, for example, in the 60s, skinny dipping was acceptable. I remember going to our YMCA in Pasadena and being expected to swim in the nude because that was natural in swimming. Well, times have changed, thanks be to God, huh?... Our seminarians go to primarily two major seminaries: Mt. Angel in Portland, Oregon, and St. Patrick's in Menlo Park. Their training is far better than it was in my time."

Bishop Ziemann said that he had issued new guidelines concerning sexual misconduct in the wake of the Father Kimball allegations. He said that he even suggested that they be placed in the diocesan paper -- "It was my idea to put it in the Redwood Crozier" -- but his priests opposed that plan, so he scotched it.

Prompting laughter from the crowd, one parishioner shot back: "I think as the boss, on occasion you have to insist."

Another parishioner wondered how a thief and accused sexual deviant could be transferred to a new parish, even after a two-year absence: "I don't understand why a priest who has stolen money does not lose his job." Bishop Ziemann responded, "Well, I removed him because of that." The parishioner fired back: "You removed him but assigned him to another parish." Again Ziemann: "I removed him for a year and nine months....When he was sent to Napa, one of the conditions was that he was not to be anywhere near money."

Another parishioner interjected: "If a man steals money, then his character is probably not sound."

"Sure, sure," Ziemman replied; "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."

Firing employees, as Protestant parishes do, would diminish priests' "prophetic" role, said Ziemann. Priests wouldn't tell "parishioners what they need to hear."

An exasperated parishoner asked: "What do you have to do to get rid of one that's bad?"

It is hard to laicize priests, Bishop Ziemman told them, because "Rome tends to side with the priest sometimes over the bishop, because there are a lot of bishops who'd like to get rid of their priests, you know? So it's a whole question of civil rights is what it amounts to."

Asked about the status of another investigation of Hume (after his transfer from the Ukiah parish, another group of young adults accused him of sexual assault),
Ziemann replied that he had conducted some of the investigation himself: "In this case, we needed a Spanish-speaking person, so I did some of it myself."

In light of Hume's continued problems, how could a congregation know if a transferred priest is morally respectable? asked a parishioner. "You can certainly ask me," said Ziemann. "If there's something in the past, I will tell those who need to know."

Ziemann lamented, parenthetically, that some of his priests lacked "people skills" -- a trait, by the way, Ziemann had in great abundance, according to Cardinal Mahony and other California prelates who expressed support for Ziemann after he acknowledged sodomy with Hume.)

A parishioner asked why the Church obstructs civil investigations: "I don't want this shell game of priests being moved from parish to parish, and this is what's gone on in the past."

Yet another parishioner noted that he had to read the Santa Rosa Press Democrat to get the truth, "but I don't think I can get anything from the diocese."

A catechism teacher, appalled by Ziemann's transferring of Hume to a new parish without telling congregants about his past, commented: "I try to tell the catechism students, because I don't think they hear it anywhere from our Catholic community these days, that they shouldn't be afraid to try to be saints; and being a saint has a high cost. And I notice, when you talk I think you try to please too many people: you worry about dividing communities and things. I think it would have been valuable to try to prosecute Hume on the embezzlement charge in court and see what happens. Because you had proof that he was guilty."

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