Bishop Issues Apology for Scandal, Losses

In his first public comments since resigning nine months ago, Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann apologized for financial mismanagement of the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa and the turmoil caused by allegations of sexual impropriety.

A letter by Ziemann was read to parishioners attending masses throughout the six-county diocese this weekend.

“I acknowledge with deep regret my responsibility for the current state of affairs, about which you are justly angry,” said Ziemann, who retains the title of bishop despite being stripped of his authority as an administrator.

He added: “I cannot express to you enough the deep remorse and repentance I feel for letting you down.”

After a Ukiah priest filed a lawsuit claiming Ziemann had coerced him into sex, the bishop admitted to consensual sex with the priest and resigned.

In subsequent months, it was revealed that the diocese was deeply in debt because of overspending during Ziemann’s leadership and payments for settlements and counseling related to priestly misconduct.

Interim church administrators led by Archbishop William Levada of San Francisco discovered that Ziemann had misappropriated $16 million entrusted to the diocese by local churches and schools.

The statement read at churches starting Saturday night did not discuss details of Ziemann’s two-year relationship with Rev. Jorge Hume Salas.

Salas claims in a lawsuit that Ziemann coerced him into sex in return for silence about the priest’s admitted 1996 theft of church money from St. Mary of the Angels in Ukiah. Ziemann has contended that the relationship was consensual.

In his statement, Ziemann thanked parishioners who stood by him, and asked for forgiveness from others.

“I urge you not to lose faith in God or in your church because of me,” he wrote.