Anger at NZ’s first ‘re-frocked’ priest
‘Hypocrisy’ claim as Catholic priest who slept with his best friend’s wife allowed back in church. By Tony Wall.
Los Angeles, 2006. Father Lio Rotor is working as a canon lawyer in the Catholic Church’s matrimonial tribunal, dealing with marriage annulment applications.
The wife of his best friend, Gabriel Beltran, comes to LA from Texas for a weekend seminar – Rotor picks her up at the airport and takes her to her hotel.
Beltran, a Dallas businessman, describes what happened in blunt terms: ‘‘The three days they were there they were f ...... each other. In fact, when I called my wife to say good night, I found out later he was with her in the bed.’’
The weekend of passion set Rotor on a rollercoaster path of humiliation, ‘‘rehab’’ and psychotherapy that 12 years later has eventually led to inner peace and readmittance to the priesthood.
There’s been no such peace for Beltran.
‘‘The affair does not leave my mind, every day I think about it,’’ he says through sobs. ‘‘I was betrayed by my best friend and then I was betrayed again by the hierarchy of my church.’’
Rotor was defrocked but was reinstated with the support of the Bishop of Auckland, Patrick Dunn, and is now parish priest at St Mary’s in Northcote on Auckland’s North Shore.
Beltran has remained with his wife but has been crusading to have his former mate defrocked again – starting an online petition (37 signatures in three months), sending letters to church leaders and posting details on social media.
He’s not spoken to Rotor since prising details of the affair out of his wife a couple of weeks after it happened. He alleges that Rotor slept with two other women, one of them married, around the same time.
Beltran says it’s ‘‘hypocrisy’’ for the church to defrock convicted paedophile priests permanently but let Rotor back into the fold, and questions if his old friend is truly remorseful.
The pair grew up together in Manila, in the Philippines, attending the same high school. They entered seminary school but only Rotor was ordained as a priest, in 1989.
In 1993 Rotor had a short stint as a parish priest, which was his preferred career path, but was recruited to the church’s diplomatic service in Rome.
After studying for several years he was posted to Nairobi, Kenya and then Washington DC.
In 2006 he left the diplomatic service and took up the fateful job in LA.
After the short affair, Beltran wrote to the Archbishop of LA and the Vatican, outlining the sordid details.
‘‘Lio was working as a defender of the bond of marriage and yet he destroyed my marriage,’’ Beltran says.
‘‘The archdiocese of Los Angeles asked me to come and do my deposition. There was a former FBI agent who worked for the church and there was a monsignor. I gave them my story.
‘‘I was warned at the time not to tell anyone, there was a gag order. That was at the time the church in the US was in big trouble because of paedophilia.’’
Rotor confessed and was stripped of his priestly duties and sent to a rehabilitation centre for wayward priests in Michigan.
Sitting in a small waiting room in the St Mary’s administration building, the softly-spoken 54-year-old recalls the humiliation of that experience.
‘‘It was a little gruelling, the emphasis was on the sin. I think the philosophy is they strip you of everything you have and question your integrity so they can build you up.’’
He was sent back to Manila, where he was formally suspended and went to law school.
He was dealing with terrible feelings of guilt for violating his sacred vows and betraying a friend.
‘‘You question everything, who you are. When you enter the priesthood you want to be as truthful as you can.
‘‘I was presented as somebody so evil and a kind of a monster – maybe not that extreme, but you start to question everything.’’
Rotor says he was pressured by the church hierarchy in Manila to apply to the Vatican to be laicised – the process by which a priest is dismissed from the clerical state, usually for life.
He didn’t want to, but he also felt a need to be ‘‘punished’’, so he wrote the letter.
In 2009 he came to New Zealand to visit a friend, and fell in love with the place.
He gained residency after getting a job as a lay chaplain at North Shore Hospital, comforting the injured and dying.
Dunn says Rotor was open about his history and was subjected to interviews and psych tests before being appointed.
The bishop suspects he was depressed and lonely when he had the affair.
‘‘He had been in the diplomatic corps, which is a really lonely life,’’ Dunn says. ‘‘I feel sorry for them, they’re moving around all the time, they’re always strangers in a strange land.’’
Rotor spent several years in the hospital job. He had female friends, he says, but never became intimate with anyone.
‘‘In the beginning it was out of fear, I don’t know why, but later on it was out of knowing that I am dedicating myself totally to God.’’
He started wondering if he could be become a priest again and spoke to Dunn, who didn’t know. It was rare to be ‘‘re-frocked’’ and certainly hadn’t happened in New Zealand before.
He got in touch with the Cardinals in Manila, who had no objections, and an application was made to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy.
Rotor was invited to attend a ‘‘renewal programme’’ at a facility in Loreto, Italy, where he spent about 14 months and went through more therapy.
In December, 2015 he was reinstated to the priesthood and returned to New Zealand, being appointed to the St Mary’s job last year.
Dunn says Rotor is held in high regard by other priests and parishioners and has become a more ‘‘integrated’’ person because of what he’s been through.
The bishop has had several conversations with Beltran and acknowledges he suffered a ‘‘huge betrayal’’.
‘‘I want him and his wife and family to have peace and I want Lio to look to the future with peace and hope. But poor old Gabriel can’t let it go.
‘‘Can a person change? I think that they can. Gabriel clearly thinks they can’t.’’
Rotor says he knows he’s hurt people, but believes the steps he’s taken have brought him back to the right path. He thinks he’s a better priest now because he can draw on his own experience when taking confession or offering advice.
‘‘I know how beautiful it is to receive God’s mercy and be forgiven.’’
He has reaffirmed his celibacy vows. What he did was a ‘‘sin against love’’, he says.
You sense Rotor denies sleeping with more than one woman, but he chooses not to answer questions about that because he doesn’t want to be seen to be somehow disparaging Beltran.
‘‘Gabby has been hurt, he’s still hurting. I don’t want to sound selfserving but if you ask me what I wish for him, it would be peace.’’
Can a person change? I think that they can. Gabriel clearly thinks they can’t. Bishop of Auckland Patrick Dunn, left