Mirror file photo/ At the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Altoona. Bishop Joseph V. Adamec blesses worshiper during the noon Ash Wednesday service.

Retired Altoona-Johnstown Bishop Joseph Adamec, who died Wednesday of natural causes at 83, and who was blamed in a 2016 grand jury report for covering up sex abuse by priests here — felt he had done no wrong, according to George Foster, a local Catholic who has worked for years to expose clergy sex abuse in he area.

“No remorse,” Foster said Friday, recalling reports he’d heard from mutual acquaintances.

It’s not true, according to diocese spokesman Tony DeGol.

“(Adamec) was well aware that as diocesan bishop, he made decisions that hurt people,” DeGol said, also on Friday. “He was deeply sorry for that.”

The grand jury report, which accused 50 priests of having abused children over four decades, excoriated Adamec and predecessor James Hogan, for enabling the abuse, failing “to protect children entrusted to their care and guidance,” sending perpetrators to diocese-approved treatment centers, then relying on self-reports from the perpetrators to justify returning them to the ministry.

The two bishops “placed their desire to avoid public scandal over the well-being of innocent children,” the report stated. “Because of their choices and failed leadership, hundreds of children suffered.”

Adamec’s attitude to the abuse was “laissez faire,” according to the report.

It was also cynical, based on a celebratory statement in response to the announcement of a decision by a victim not to pursue a civil case against the notorious Francis Luddy, a statement the diocese released despite Luddy’s having confessed to molesting, groping, masturbating, performing oral sex upon or sodomizing at least 10 children, the report stated.

In that statement, the diocese contended that the victim’s decision shows that all accusations against Luddy were “baseless,” according to the report.

“The chilling impact of such a victory lap on the victims of child abuse throughout the diocese is incalculable,” the report stated.

Yet it was never Adamec’s intention to hurt anyone, DeGol said.

Eventually, knowing that such hurt had occurred, Adamec “spent many, many days in recent years praying for all those (victims),” DeGol said.

Attorney Richard Serbin has represented many of them.

The abuse has conveyed most toward a variety of counterproductive behavior, including alcohol and drug dependence, thoughts of suicide, depression, loss of trust and loss of the ability to be intimate, Serbin said.

Such behavior affects not only the victims, but their families, he said.

People who have never been abused sometimes say “get over it,” but most victims find that impossible, he said.

The complications that prevent them moving past it include guilt for what they did and what was done to them, and for letting those things happen, Serbin said.

He often needs to remind them not to look at the abuse from the perspective of middle age — which is when most call him for the first time, often the first time they’ve told anyone — but from the perspective of the children they were when the men they were taught to trust and honor took advantage of them, he said.

It’s especially difficult for males, because of the shame connected with admitting to fellatio or sodomization, which is “the most heinous violation,” he said.

“Such a non-macho image of themselves is hard to face,” Serbin said.

Church authorities who protected the abusers did so not so much out of reluctance to throw their brothers in the clergy to the wolves, but out of a “cold, calculating business decision to protect the reputation of the church,” or as members of a “fraternity of silence,” or out of a reluctance to harm their profession — and also because among many clergymen there is a network of culpability, according to Serbin and Foster.

That network of culpability makes anyone thinking of exposing anyone else hesitate because of his own vulnerability, they said.

“There is so much dirt that each has on the other,” Serbin said.

That “dirt” is not all pedophilia, but includes adult homosexual relationships and adult heterosexual relationships, Serbin said.

Because of the priestly vow of celibacy, all of those are equally illicit in the context of Catholicism, Foster said.

Helping also to discourage exposure is the “seal of confession,” which by church law prohibits priests from revealing sins heard during the sacrament of confession — a seal that is honored in the secular law of Pennsylvania, Serbin said.

It all adds up to a “systemic crisis,” Serbin said.

“Of course, there are good priests,” Serbin said. “I feel bad for those.”

Three diocese parishioners who spoke Friday outside the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament — but who didn’t want their names used — recalled being especially appalled by Adamec’s creation of a payoff scale for victims, with amounts proportional to the gravity of abuse. Thus, the payout for fondling above a victim’s clothes would be $10,000-$25,000, while the payout for sodomy or intercourse would be $50,000-$175,000.

“How cold and calculating,” one of the parishioners said.

While both bishops implicated in the grand jury report did wrong, Hogan and Adamec displayed opposite personality types during the 12 weeks of a civil trial in which Luddy was the defendant, Serbin said.

Hogan listened every day to negative things about himself, but “still treated me with warmth,” Serbin said.

By contrast, Adamec “was a very cold person, business-focused, rather than morally focused or showing empathy to those brutalized,” Serbin said.

DeGol doesn’t see Adamec — who hired DeGol about a decade ago, not long before the bishop’s retirement — that way.

“He was always very supportive of me,” DeGol said.

At one point after the hiring, DeGol’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, then died, and Adamec was caring — encouraging DeGol to trust in God that things would work out, urging him to enjoy the time he had left with his mom and pushing him to make sure he took care of himself.

“I will never forget it,” DeGol said.

As bishop for 24 years, starting in 1987, Adamec left a major imprint on diocesan life, according to DeGol.

He unified the liturgy in the parishes of the diocese to standards set by Vatican II, so the experiences of parishioners would be the same no matter where they went to church, DeGol said.

He established a lay ministry initiative to encourage parishioners to become more engaged, DeGol said.

He created a youth ministry office.

And he emphasized development of a “permanent diaconate” — bringing a Hogan initiative to fruition, DeGol said.

He also braved wide­spread resistance in the interest of being realistic by closing, consolidating and clustering parishes with the help of a study committee, recognizing that with fewer priests, fewer Catholics and churches that lacked congregations big enough to support them, there was no choice, DeGol said.

He did it before it became common practice elsewhere.

“He wasn’t afraid at that time to tackle a very challenging issue,” DeGol said. “He knew what needed to be done for the overall good of the church.”

When people complained, he’d say that the church isn’t so much about buildings as people, DeGol said.

He promoted ecumenism, working with representatives of various Christian traditions, particularly Lutherans and those professing Orthodoxy, DeGol said.

Adamec also launched an effort to make Prince Demetrius Gallitzin a saint, a long-term push that has been completed here and is now centered in the Vatican, DeGol said.

“He absolutely recognized the need for us to celebrate (Gallitzin’s) legacy,” DeGol said.

Now that he’s gone, Adamec, “is only facing one judge,” DeGol said.

That judgement will necessarily be correct, although it isn’t for him to say how it will go, DeGol said.

Foster spoke likewise.

“I’m not here to judge his soul,” the activist said. “I prayed for him, and I told everybody to pray for him.”

“Only God knows what was truly in his mind and in his heart,” said one of the parishioners outside the Cathedral.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.