LOS ANGELES — A Mexican citizen is suing Catholic cardinals in Mexico City and Los Angeles, accusing them of purposely hiding the background of a Mexican priest accused of sexually abusing dozens of children. The suit, filed in a Los Angeles federal court on behalf of an unidentified Mexican man, charges that US cardinal Roger Mahony and Mexican cardinal Norberto Rivera intentionally covered up a pattern of child sex abuse by former priest Nicolas Aguilar.
Judges in California have already twice rejected claims against Rivera and Mahony, saying a Mexican cannot sue another Mexican in a US court. The latest filing however is based on a 1789 law that allows non-citizens to sue in US courts over human rights violations.
"Defendants, in concert with each other and with the intent to conceal and defraud, conspired... (to) misrepresent, conceal and fail to disclose information relating to the sexual misconduct of Father Aguilar," the lawsuit alleges.
The case claims that Aguilar demonstrated a pattern of sexual abuse of minors that was known to Rivera, who nonetheless authorized his transfer to the Los Angeles Archdiocese in 1987.
The suit alleges Rivera sent Mahony a letter detailing Aguilar's "homosexual problems," including information about alleged child sex abuse, but the Mexican priest was allowed to remain in his office.
Mahony denies receiving the March 1987 letter.
Later that year, two altar boys at the Our Lady of Guadalupe in Los Angeles said they had been abused by Aguilar.
Aguilar was able to return to Mexico in 1988, even though several accusations of pedophilia had already been raised against him, and was placed back in a church in the Mexican diocese of Tehuacan.
"In 1997, when plaintiff was 12 years old, Nicolas Aguilar sexually abused plaintiff," the suit says.
A police investigation in 1998 uncovered 26 allegations of child sex abuse by Aguilar in just the nine months he was in Los Angeles.
Though Aguilar was jailed for a year by a Mexican court, he is currently free.
The suit comes as the Catholic Church struggles to deal with the fallout from a raft of child sex abuse scandals involving its priests worldwide.
Victims have criticized the church, including its highest figure Pope Benedict XVI, for failing to effectively address years of allegations by victims of predator priests.
On Monday, the pope admitted to leading a "wounded and sinner" church as he marked his fifth year in office.
A day earlier, he held a tearful meeting with abuse victims in Malta, one of the latest countries to be hit by sex abuse scandals.
In his third meeting with victims of child-molesting priests -- the other two were during trips to Australia and the United States in 2008 -- Benedict expressed his "shame and sorrow" over the scourge.
