Attorney Denies Being at Meeting With Priest

An attorney for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on Thursday denied a claim that he attended a 1986 meeting at which a priest told Cardinal Roger M. Mahony that he had sexually abused minors.

The attorney, John P. McNicholas, said in a letter faxed to The Times that he has never met the former priest, Michael Stephen Baker, and never been in the same room with him.

The Times quoted Baker in an article Thursday saying that he attended a meeting in December 1986 with Mahony, his vicar for clergy and McNicholas. In a series of interviews, Baker described the meeting, including comments by McNicholas.

McNicholas did not return calls to his office before the story was published, nor on Thursday. A spokesman for the archdiocese, while not challenging Baker’s account of what happened at the meeting, said Thursday that McNicholas was not present.