The old adage is that the Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned. While it is highly unlikely that a Roman emperor played a fiddle, the adage is a good description of how the Bishops and the last five Popes have neglected their duty of protecting children.What is burning?The Irish church my father showed me firsthand in the early 1980’s is simply gone.While prominent Catholics have withdrawn their support, the Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, John Nienstedt, has refused to speak. Nienstedt is silent regarding what he knew, what documents he has in the secret archives…
News & Events
Today the Minnesota Supreme Court held in a four to one decision that clergy members will be held to the same standard of law as other professionals in the state, regardless of religion. In the case State v. Wenthe, a priest had an ongoing sexual relationship with an adult parishioner under the guise of counseling. As a result, the priest was convicted of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for violating Minnesota Statutes section 609.344, subd. 1(l)(i) which prohibits sexual conduct between a clergy member and a parishioner during a single meeting when the purpose of the meeting …
The news that two priests from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis are taking leaves of absence for “misconduct” is alarming. Rather than tell the public the truth about the reasons for removing the priests, the Archdiocese continues to tell half-truths. We are alarmed about an Archdiocese that continues to mislead, deny, and conceal important information from the public…
It’s Halloween and you should be scared in Minnesota. There are dozens of credibly accused clerical offenders of children whose names are only known to the Catholic bishops and kept secret. You don’t know who they are, and you don’t know where they are. What we do know is that they could harm our children and that the hierarchs in Minnesota from Duluth to St. Cloud to New Ulm, to Winona and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis know and have already determined the clerical offenders to be “credibly accused” of abuse of minors. But with only the desire to protect…
Doe 23 courageously filed suit today against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and Father Robert M. Thurner, who allegedly sexually abused Doe 23 in 1984-85 when she was a young girl and student at St. Joseph’s School in West St. Paul. Doe 23 likely would not have had to file this suit – would never have been molested by Thurner – had the Archdiocese’s hierarchy fulfilled its legal and moral obligations and reported Thurner’s prior admitted sexual abuse of another minor to law enforcement in 1982.The Archdiocese’s cover up of its priests’ sexual abuse of minors and other relat…
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, amid growing concerns of internal handling of clergy sexual abuse cases, responded to allegations of child pornography involving Father Jonathan Shelley by debating what constitutes the definition of child pornography. Below you will find a list of documents that contain conversations and correspondence between top church officials including Archbishop John Nienstedt, former Vicar General Peter Laird and canon lawyer and former chancellor for canonical affairs, Jennifer Haselberger. Also included is the police investigation of Fr. Jonathan…
It appears that former Pope Benedict has come out of retirement – donned another hat, as it were – as a revisionist historian. In his first published comments since resigning as pope in February, Benedict has denied that he tried to cover up the sexual abuse of children by priests. The denial grabs headlines because it comes from Benedict, but it’s really just another instance of the church hierarchy clumsily and cynically attempting to protect itself while callously hurting survivors. Benedict’s denial is part of a letter he wrote to an Italian author who wrote a book about problems in …
Today’s Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) story about the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ failure to protect its parishioners from one of its predator priests, Fr. Curtis Wehmeyer, needs to be read by everyone. The headline – “Archdiocese knew of priest’s sexual misbehavior, yet kept him in ministry” – itself tells the story. From there, the details of Archdiocesan self-preservation and negligence are infuriating. In 2012, Wehmeyer was convicted of criminal sexual conduct and possessing child pornography in connection with Wehmeyer’s sexual abuse of two boys, ages 12 and 14, in a camper …
Last week a Benilde-St. Margaret’s High School teacher was fired for engaging in inappropriate communications with his students. Although the details of the teacher’s firing are not entirely clear, the incident brings to light a topic of significant concern in the area of modern child protection –technology is changing the mode of communication and the boundaries between adults in positions of authority and mentorship, and the children they interact with on a daily basis.
When sexual abuse allegations surfaced at Yeshiva University High School in late 2012, the school hired a prominent law firm to independently investigate these serious allegations involving at least two staff members, Rabbi George Finkelstein and Rabbi Macy Gordon with the stated focus being to “perform a full and complete independent investigation of these reports and any other reports of sexual or physical abuse of University students.” Both Finkelstein and Gordon were at the school for a combined 64 years and no doubt came into contact with hundreds, if not thousands of young students.
As we stand beside one of former Priest Thomas Maloney’s courageous victims, Andrew Ward and his family today, and in light of Archbishop Myers’ botched handling of the Michael Fugee and Robert Chabak scandals, it is with concern for past and future victims of clergy sexual abuse that we question Archbishop Myers’ handling of child sexual abuse allegations. While Father Maloney was employed by the Diocese of Peoria from the 1960s through 2000s, at least three separate allegations of sexual impropriety were made against him by victims or their families. These allegations along with …
We are saddened and disturbed by the news today that a Mille Lacs County Sheriff’s deputy has been charged with sexually assaulting four boys during a church-affiliated fishing trip. The deputy, Aaron Joseph Heuer, 29, is accused of inappropriately touching four boys between the ages of 8 and 10, and has been charged with eight counts of criminal sexual conduct in Otter Tail County, Minn. At least some of the alleged crimes occurred in June while Heuer was volunteering as a fishing guide at Lutheran Island Camp in Henning, Minn. This news unfortunately is a reminder that all organizations that…
The courage of survivors such as David Pususta always inspires and amazes us. David came forward today to not only reveal publicly for the first time that he is a child sexual abuse survivor, but he also discussed his abuse and identified his abuser, who was never publicly named previously. David also filed court documents in Ramsey County District Court seeking to force the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to unseal and make public its secret list of 33 Archdiocesan priests credibly accused of child sex abuse…
The Vatican has fast-tracked Pope John Paul II for sainthood, even though a significant portion of the clerical sex abuse scandal happened on his watch. This is concerning, but not surprising, given the Church’s history of protecting priests instead of children and patting itself on the back while willfully failing to take meaningful action regarding abusive priests or abuse survivors. According to an Associated Press (AP) story, Pope Francis signed a decree on Friday declaring John Paul for sainthood, culminating a “fast-track” process that informally began at John Paul’s 2005 funeral ,…
