What will Archbishop Levada say in his deposition?

Having spent $53 million to settle more than 100 claims of priestly sex abuse, Portland in 2004 became the nation’s first Roman Catholic archdiocese to declare bankruptcy. Dozens of other cases are in limbo while a bankruptcy court sorts out the archdiocese’s finances. On Jan. 9, Levada is scheduled to be deposed in San Francisco by lawyers for several of those plaintiffs, including some whose alleged abuse occurred during his tenure there.

In his letter in Catholic San Francisco, Levada said that he restored Baccellieri’s priestly duties after "extensive therapeutic treatment" and after determining "that he had been truly repentant and could be trusted to engage in limited ministry with proper supervision."

Records show that Baccellieri served as either pastor or associate pastor in four Portland-area parishes between 1994 and 2001, when he went on leave to study canon law. In 2002, after U.S. bishops adopted their so-called "zero-tolerance" sex abuse policy, and long after Levada had come to San Francisco, Baccellieri was once again removed from ministry.

As it turns out, the accusations that Levada knew about before reinstating the priest aren’t the only complaints against Baccellieri.

Since 2004, four other men have come forward claiming that Baccellieri sexually abused them as teenagers during the same 1971-1975 period as the men whose secret payments Levada approved. They have filed lawsuits against the Portland Archdiocese.

All seven of Baccellieri’s alleged victims fit a similar profile. Each was a member of the band at the same Catholic high school in Portland where Baccellieri taught music from the late 1960s until the mid-’70s. He is alleged to have abused the teenagers both in his residence at a retirement home where he also served as chaplain and at a beach house in Lincoln City, Ore.

David Slader, an attorney for three of the men who have filed lawsuits, says it is "unconscionable" that Levada never bothered to report Baccellieri to law enforcement after learning that the priest was a sex offender. (Bunce, the archdiocese spokesman, says that the church would not have been obligated under state law to turn over Baccellieri for criminal prosecution in the 1990s because by then the alleged victims were adults.)