Brooklyn Bishop Slams Charges of Bribery as “Patently False,” Demands Retraction

From the In My Backyard Desk, news about my bishop:

The head of the Catholic Church in Brooklyn offered a $5,000 bribe to an Albany politician in exchange for dropping her support for the reform of a state law preventing victims of child sexual abuse from seeking justice, the pol claimed Monday. Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, who has for a decade advocated for an overhaul of the state’s statute of limitations on claims of child sexual abuse, said she turned down the unholy hush money from Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio in 2007. “I’m not a billionaire, but I don’t need $5,000 to buy me off,” Markey told the Daily News. The offer came across as a payoff, not a campaign donation, she added. The Brooklyn Diocese called the allegation “patently false.”

Today, Bishop DiMarzio fired back with this letter, in which he states he is “demanding an immediate retraction of your defamatory statements…my character has been impugned and my name slandered as Bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn.”