ANAHEIM, Calif. — For decades, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony was the convener and the star of the nation’s largest annual gathering of Roman Catholics, which opened here on Thursday. 
This year, though, Cardinal Mahony was nowhere to be seen at the gathering, the Religious Education Congress. His workshop on immigration was canceled. The cardinal was relieved of his public duties last month by his successor after the release of 12,000 pages of internal church files revealing how Cardinal Mahony protected priests accused of sexually abusing minors.
In a rare breach of the deference American bishops usually grant one another, the current archbishop of Los Angeles,José H. Gomez, said he found the documents “brutal and painful” reading. Cardinal Mahony soon shot back, posting a bitter open letter to Archbishop Gomez on his blog.
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