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As part of a $1.6 million settlement announced this month, officials of the Diocese of Santa Rosa, which stretches from suburbs north of San Francisco to the Oregon border, have agreed to apologize to the victims of the accused priest, and to fund a counseling program that will be overseen by abuse victims or their representatives.

The unprecedented agreement, worked out by victims' lawyers in cooperation with diocese financial officer Monsignor John Brenkle, is the most substantive sign of change yet in a diocese rocked by an escalating series of sexual and financial scandals. Over the past decade the Santa Rosa Diocese and its insurers have paid out at least $6 million in settlement fees to victims of sexual abuse by priests.

A monsignor, convicted of molestation, is in prison; one priest fled the country after repeated molestation charges; another committed suicide. On Friday, a former diocesan priest and youth ministry leader was charged with rape and committing lewd acts against minors in a series of complaints dating back several decades.

The situation reached a climax in June when Bishop George Patrick Ziemann, the diocese's charismatic prelate, resigned amid charges of sexual harassment and coercion brought by a priest, Father Jorge Hume Salas, who had himself been dismissed after being accused of stealing from church collections. Ziemann, who resigned July 21 after Hume Salas filed a lawsuit against him, at first denied the sexual relationship. Then, confronted with taped and DNA evidence, he admitted it, but insisted the sex was consensual. Hume Salas' lawsuit is now in pre-trial preparation.

In the weeks and months that followed, it was revealed that, on Ziemann's watch, the diocesan funds had been raided to the tune of some $16 million. Money collected for school construction, parish maintenance, missions and church charities was instead used for payments to abuse victims, expansion programs, new hires and high-risk investments that left the diocese nearly bankrupt.

Ziemann, exercising his Fifth Amendment rights against possible criminal charges, has refused to talk to police or the media. Monsignor Thomas Keys, the diocese's former high-profile finance officer, has gone into seclusion. More bad news emerges almost monthly -- most recently the revelation that Ziemann and Keys, desperate to recoup their losses, invested $5 million in a Luxembourg-based firm that was under investigation for fraud by the U.S. government. To recover the missing funds, the diocese has joined a class-action lawsuit.

And yet the scandal may in the end show the way to a revitalized diocese and church. March has seen a remarkable number of apologies from church leaders, ranging from Pope John Paul II's historic request for forgiveness of the church's failings over centuries, to a small, moving ceremony held in Oakland, Calif., last weekend, where Bishop John Cummins publicly apologized to sexual-abuse victims in his diocese.

In the Diocese of Santa Rosa, leaders agreed to hold a cathartic series of town meetings, chaired by Brenkle, to let Catholic laymen as well as women, nuns and priests air their fear and anger. I attended one last month, and witnessed both the pain and the surprising healing power the scandals have unleashed within one corner of the church.

Next page | Ziemann: The choice of L.A.'s Cardinal Mahony