LOS ANGELES, March 4 - As sexual-abuse cases involving Roman Catholic priests have gained national attention in recent weeks, the archbishop of Los Angeles has been quietly removing priests involved in such cases.
Although the archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahony, declined to comment, people in the archdiocese said as many as 12 priests in Southern California had been told to retire or leave their ministries.
In San Francisco Solano Church in Rancho Santa Margarita in Orange County, parishioners were stunned on Sunday when their priest for 12 years, the Rev. Michael Pecharich, told them that he was resigning because he "transgressed the personal boundaries of an adolescent" 19 years ago.
In a pastoral statement last month in the diocesan newspaper, Cardinal Mahony apologized to anyone sexually abused by a priest and promised to remove any priest or deacon involved in sexual misconduct.
"Though no human plan can possibly foresee all eventualities," he wrote, "I can say without hesitation that extensive efforts are being taken by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to make certain that all who minister to God's people in this archdiocese do so with personal integrity, trustworthiness, and zeal - all the qualities of the Good Shepherd."
The action was taken amid reports that priests in the Boston Archdiocese continued working in parishes although Cardinal Bernard Law and other officials were aware that they had sexually abused children.
Other dioceses have also begun to act. Diocese officials in Manchester, N.H., have given prosecutors the names of 14 priests accused of sexually abusing children from 1963 to 1987. Dioceses in Worcester, Mass., and Portland, Me., are releasing the names of priests with histories of pedophilia. In Philadelphia, officials have reviewed personnel files since 1950 looking for abuses by priests and found "credible evidence" that 35 had sexually abused 50 children.
An impetus for diocesan officials in Los Angeles and Orange Counties was a $5.2 million settlement in August between the dioceses and Ryan DiMaria, 28, who sued saying he had been abused as a teenager by a priest who was principal at a Catholic high school. Under the accord, the dioceses agreed to enforce a zero- tolerance policy and dismiss employees found guilty of such abuse.
Mr. DiMaria's lawyer, Katherine K. Freberg, said, "Ryan and I really wanted to see that policy put into place to stop priests who use the collar to get innocent victims and to help other victims know that the church was not going to tolerate these molestations and stop the cover up."