NY's Cardinal DolanTo Be Deposed in Abuse Lawsuits

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"Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, will be deposed on Wednesday afternoon by lawyers representing hundreds of people who say they were sexually abused by priests in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which Cardinal Dolan led before his appointment to New York in 2009.

Cardinal Dolan is one of two American cardinals who are being deposed in sexual abuse lawsuits this week, and who plan to travel to Rome next week in advance of the proceedings to elect the successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who stunned the world last week with the announcement that he was resigning effective Feb. 28.

The other American is Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles. He is expected to be deposed on Saturday in Los Angeles, and he has been under fire since the court-ordered release last month of 12,000 pages of internal church files revealing his role in shielding accused priests from the law.

Cardinal Dolan has been much discussed as a possible candidate for pope. The cardinal, who is the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is a charismatic figure at ease in parishes as well as in morning talk show studios, and he left a strong impression in the Vatican last year with speeches promoting what the church calls the “new evangelization.”

But since coming to New York, he has been dogged from time to time by the legal cases in Milwaukee. "

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"Mr. Anderson, who is taking the deposition of Cardinal Dolan on Wednesday, said he had already deposed a former Milwaukee archbishop, Rembert G. Weakland, and Auxiliary Bishop Richard J. Sklba.

“The deposition of Cardinal Dolan is necessary to show that there’s been a longstanding pattern and practice to keep secrets and keep the survivors from knowing that there had been a fraud committed,” Mr. Anderson said.

The Milwaukee Archdiocese said in a recent court filing that it had spent $9 million so far in legal fees and was almost broke. Bankruptcy creditors, who include those who say they were victims, accuse the archdiocese, under Cardinal Dolan, of shielding $55 million in assets in a cemetery trust. The archdiocese argued that those assets were set aside for Catholic burials and should be protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

A spokeswoman for Cardinal Dolan did not immediately respond to a request for comment. "

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