LA Archdiocese to Unredact Sex Abuse Files

Names of church leaders who helped cover up abuse will be revealed

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles will soon reveal 30,000 pages of confidential personnel files without blacking out the names of the church leaders who knew about sexual abuse by priests and made key decisions on how to handle it, an archdiocese attorney said Wednesday.

The names of any bishops, vicars for clergy and supervisory parish priests will be included in all the documents and they will be turned over to lawyers for abuse victims soon, said archdiocese attorney Michael Hennigan. Vicars for clergy are responsible for priestly discipline and often made significant decisions about how to handle problem priests with input from the bishop or archbishop.

"We have chosen to remove redactions of those key individuals on every document," Hennigan said in an email. "There will be no ambiguity."