A correspondent writes:

The Diocese of Amarillo was one of the hardest hit by the unfortunate events of 2002 — by which I mean the “party’s over, fellas” rules adopted by the U.S. Catholic bishops at their Dallas meeting. As a result, Amarillo lost one out of every six of its priests. The priests who left had all been guilty of at least one count of sexual abuse. This number included the Rev. John Anthony Salazar-Jimenez, who came to Amarillo to get a fresh start in parish ministry after — I’m not making this up — SERVING THREE BLOODY YEARS IN A CALIFORNIA PRISON AFTER PLEADING GUILTY TO MOLESTING TWO TEEN BOYS AT A CATHOLIC SCHOOL!

After all this came out, the Amarillo faithful learned that their poor, sparsely populate diocese had been a dumping ground for sex-mad priests who were being recycled into ministry from the Servants of the Paraclete center in New Mexico, and the St. Luke’s Institute in Maryland (“program priests” they were called). The laity were furious at not being told who had been sent among them to minister, but Bishop John Yanta refused to apologize for it. He said to them, in a public meeting, “The communication of the truth is not a universal right.” (That’s a good motto for the American Catholic Church, if you ask me). Bp. Yanta later told the Dallas Morning News that he was “upbeat” about the diocese’s future.

Here’s a story about Salazar’s latest

A Dallas County grand jury will consider a case in which a West Texas priest convicted in the 1980s of molesting children has been accused of sexually assaulting a teen-ager at a motel in September.

And from the New Times, via the Bishop-Accountability site an article about Salazar’s history in California (Scroll down to “Camp Ped”)