San Francisco, USA - It didn't take long for the officers of the court to see how hard it is to find a jury that can dispassionately pass judgment on Catholic bishops accused of covering up the crimes of pedophile priests.
No one had even mentioned the name of Bishop Emeritus John Cummins, the retired leader of the Diocese of Oakland, when the second potential juror questioned at the Hayward Hall of Justice offered her opinion:
"John Cummins pushed it under the rug,'' said the woman, a Catholic who has worked for the church. "It should have been dealt with a long time ago.''
This week, lawyers on both sides of the bay argued the first two cases to face juries from hundreds of lawsuits filed against the church under a 2002 state law.
The legislation temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on organizations that gave known child molesters access to more victims, and has given the Catholic Church in California a legal battle of biblical proportions.
On Thursday, closing arguments were made and jury deliberations began in a trial against the Archdiocese of San Francisco, which stands accused of negligence for not stopping child abuse committed by the late Rev. Joseph Pritchard.
Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court rejected a request from the San Francisco Archdiocese to block the next trial in a series of suits seeking to hold the church responsible for molestations by Pritchard. Church lawyers had asked the court to bar evidence that church officials were on notice of past abuse.
In Hayward, jury selection continued for a third day in a potentially costlier case against the Diocese of Oakland, which has already admitted negligence for its supervision of the Rev. Robert Ponciroli, the retired pastor of St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Antioch.
Lawyers questioning potential jurors found themselves tiptoeing through an emotional minefield of revulsion, rage and religious belief.
Church lawyer Allen Ruby spent most of Thursday questioning jurors summoned to the Hayward courtroom of Alameda County Superior Court Judge Harry Sheppard.
At times, Ruby sounded more like a priest than a lawyer.
"What about redemption? Can a person who has done awful things redeem themselves?'' Ruby asked one juror. "Do you think organizations can redeem themselves?''
The woman under interrogation said "yes" to both questions. But when it comes to child molestation, she said, the coverup is worse than the crime.
"I'm repulsed by priests molesting children. But something must be wrong with people like that," she told Ruby. "But those who sit down and rationally decide to cover up child abuse -- that would really make me angry.''
Another potential juror said he knew nothing about the Oakland case, but had followed stories about the scandal in other dioceses across the country.
"There seems to be a pattern of the church not dealing with this, and protecting the priests first, not the victims,'' he said.
Several jurors said they think priests should be held to a higher standard of conduct.
"Priests should be better than other people,'' said one juror. "They should know what not to do.''
Others differ on the question of priestly crime.
Stockton attorney Larry Drivon represents dozens of abuse claimants in clergy sex abuse cases now pending across the state.
One of them is Dennis Kavanaugh, the plaintiff in the case now before a San Francisco jury.
Priests come to the witness stand, Drivon said, with advantages and disadvantages.
"There are some people who believe that priests will absolutely tell the truth,'' he said. "And I have heard other jurors say they are disinclined to believe anything a priest says.''
Drivon says he has no golden rule about whether Catholic jurors should sit on juries passing judgment on Catholic bishops.
"As long as they have an open mind,'' he said.
Potential jurors in the molestation trials on both sides of the bay were required to fill out lengthy questionnaires.
They were asked, among other things, about their religious beliefs, whether they had been sexually abused, what newspapers they read, and how closely they have followed news about the clergy sex abuse scandal.
Jurors in the East Bay case were asked what they thought of Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned as the archbishop of Boston amidst the sex abuse scandal there.
They were asked:
"Do you think Cardinal Law should be criminally prosecuted?"
"Do you believe the Catholic Church can be considered an accomplice to the acts of sexual misconduct by its priests over the years?"
"Do you think a bishop of the Catholic Church would lie under oath to protect himself or the church?"
Bishops across the state are closely watching this week's sexual abuse trials in San Francisco and the East Bay.
Judgments in these two cases could be used as a benchmark in any collective settlement of other pending lawsuits, including more than 150 in Northern California.
In Thursday's questioning, Ruby asked one potential juror if he would set an upper limit on the amount of money he could see the church paying for the concealment of child sexual abuse.
The juror thought for a while. He said it would depend on lots of different factors, but it would definitely be "under 1 trillion dollars."