Church ignored paper trail of abuse

The priest was transferred to various parishes despite church officials' awareness of his having abused boys.
WASHINGTON POST
Father Luke Meunier, who was born in 1915, was ordained in 1939, traveled as a "pilgrim" priest from diocese to diocese, and eventually showed up in 1974 in Tucson, Ariz. He's now presumed dead.
In 1966 in Canada, the head priest in a Catholic diocese wrote a letter about a priest named Lucien -- Luc Meunier.
"Yesterday, September 1st 1966, Father Meunier took a boy of 9 years of age to the zoo in Granby, and touched the boy in ways that are condemnable from every point of view," the letter said. "Father Meunier ... admitted having caressed the boy. He further [said] he would disappear from Granby."
Albert Coderre of Tucson was then 2 years old.
The next letter about Father Luke, dated March 11, 1967, from the same head priest to an auxiliary bishop in Sudbury, Ontario, who was asking about him, said, "We did not wish to push the inquiry deeper because Father left the diocese. I can honestly say, however, that this was the first complaint of this nature against him. Perhaps these caresses were not all that serious ... we don't know."
Coderre had just turned 3.
Missing
Another letter, dated March 13, 1972, and written by the bishop in Pueblo, Colo.: "Following the revelation to his parents of the advances made by Father Meunier on at least four different occasions by a ten-year-old boy, the pastor of St. Mary parish, Walsenburg, Colorado, with my assistance, made arrangements for Father Meunier to go to Via Coeli, Jemez Springs, New Mexico. ... Father Meunier did not arrive in Jemez Springs; and presumably is somewhere in the United States or in Canada as a potential source of great harm to young boys and as a source of great sorrow to parents of these boys."
This was followed by another letter a week later: "Father Meunier has a problem in his relationship with boys," said the letter, which was sent to Joseph Bernardin, then general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in Washington. "If you think that this information should be given to the bishops of the United States, you may advise them confidentially."
Now Coderre was 8.
March 11, 1974: "Dear Father Meunier," began the letter from a church official in Tucson. "I am happy to extend to you the faculties of the Diocese of Tucson. ..."
When Coderre was 10, his family switched churches to Our Mother of Sorrow.
Beginning of abuse
That's where Coderre entered the altar boy program and met Father Luke in May or June 1975. Meunier approached an 11-year-old Coderre and invited him into a room behind the altar.
By Coderre's recollection, Meunier came after him several times as he ended fifth grade and so often when sixth grade began, that he finally said something to his parents, who said something to the head priest at the church, who came to the Coderre household and said, as Coderre remembers it, "that I was lying."
And with that, Father Luke disappeared from Albert Coderre's life and for a long time in memory.
Records indicate the father was convicted in 1976 of molesting two brothers in a small town outside Tucson, was sentenced to prison, was hospitalized in an Arizona state mental-health facility -- and was released after two years with his civil rights restored, the judgment of guilt vacated and all charges against him dismissed. The records don't explain why or what happened to him afterward, except for a brief memo in 1978 from a church secretary at Our Mother of Sorrows to the head priest that said, "Did you know that Fr. Meunier is back in town?????? ... Oh, the joys of life."