Ruben Rosario: Survivors spoke, and the archbishop listened

By Ruben Rosario
Pioneer Press
September 23, 2014

http://www.twincities.com/columnists/ci_26593296/ruben-rosario-survivors-spoke-and-archbishop-listened

John C. Nienstedt, archbishop of the Diocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

The two men, the embattled archbishop and perhaps his harshest critic, briefly walked around Crocus Hill before settling on a bench near the Cathedral of St. Paul.

There were no lawyers. There were no handlers. It was just two men conversing on a bench.

Bob Schwiderski, who prefers to call himself a survivor, and not a victim, of clergy sexual abuse, did most of the talking at the Aug. 20 meeting. John Nienstedt, who heads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, did most of the listening.

Schwiderski is a former altar boy from Hector, Minn. He was repeatedly molested in the early 1960s by a now long-deceased priest also suspected of victimizing others during his parish assignments in Hector, Green Valley and other locales decades ago. Schwiderski has over the years carved a niche as the state's most outspoken crusader for survivors like himself.

He has very publicly locked horns with church leaders, lambasting them time and again for protecting abusive priests instead of vulnerable children. He would like to see Nienstedt resign in the wake of publicly revealed mishandlings of recent clergy sex abuse cases.

"We've had a history," he told me this week.

Yet, when asked, Schwiderski willingly offered Nienstedt some advice on how best to connect and meet with survivors like himself. He couched his response in hunting terms that day.

"When I go pheasant hunting," Schwiderski said he recalls telling the archbishop, "I put on the appropriate clothes; I oil up the old shotgun, get my hunting license and go to where the pheasants are.