Documents indicate Law, Liebrecht failed to stop Bucher affairs

Monsignor Phillip Bucher's attorneys filed a motion earlier this week to prevent details of any affairs from being the focus of questioning during an April 20 deposition in Glenna McKitterick's sexual harassment suit against him.
In documents filed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Ms. McKitterick's attorney, Harold Glass, Springfield, opposed the motion, which included citations based on cases involving a physician and a university president.
"Those cases are distinguishable," the court document says, "because, presumably, the physician and the university president did not proclaim to God and the world that they would remain celibate and chaste."
The motion also noted that one of Bucher's alleged affairs was already made public in the Dec. 8, 2002, Boston Globe story headlined "Former Law advisor says Missouri priest affair ignored."
The article, written during a time in which Cardinal Bernard Law was under fire for covering up affairs involving Boston priests, includes this passage:
"As documents emerge indicating Bernard Cardinal Law knew of improper relationships between Boston Archdiocese priests and adult women, a Missouri man alleges Law washed his hands of a similar situation in that state.
"A man who served as an informal advisor to Law on business issues says in the early 1980s he asked Law, then bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, to stop an affair between a high-ranking priest and a relative of the adviser.
The priest, Msgr. Philip Bucher, then Law's vicar general, had become involved with the adviser's mother-in-law, the man said, adding that at first Law acted decisively.
" 'I went to Bishop Law. He stopped it dead in in its tracks,' he said. The relationship broke off for two years but began again shortly after Law was appointed archbishop of Boston in 1984, he said."
" 'I called Law in Boston. He said, 'Well, you'll just have to take
that up with the (new) bishop,' '' the adviser said, adding he had
indeed taken his concern to Bishop John J. Leibrecht, both before and
after his second request to Law.
" 'Bishop Leibrecht just stonewalled. We had several meetings and he
did nothing,' he said, adding the affair has continued to the present
day and contributed to the breakup of his own marriage.
"Law's spokeswoman did not immediately comment on the case. Bucher, now
pastor of Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Branson, Mo., did not return
calls. Springfield diocese spokeswoman Marilyn Vydra called Bucher
'one of our most respected priests.'
"But real estate records show Bucher purchased a home in Albuquerque,
N.M., in the late 1990s with another Springfield woman.
" 'This is all news to me,' said Vydra, who said the second woman is a
former employee of the Springfield diocese."
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Today's motion noted, "There is a distinction between relationships with women who are outside the scope of Father Bucher's ministry and women who were parishioners, volunteers or paid employees."
The motion concluded, "Father Bucher's motion is an effort to hide behind the church's familiar code of silence and stonewall evidence of a priest's sexual activities that may have probative value."