Before Scandal, Finn Was Prominent Conservative Voice in Catholic Church

By Aamer Madhani
USA Today
April 21, 2015

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/21/bishop-robert-finn-profile-sex-abuse-scandal/26117279/

Bishop Robert Finn, of Kansas City, Mo., leaves a meeting at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' annual fall assembly in Baltimore on Nov. 14, 2011.

Before he became one of the highest profile members of the clergy found complicit in the U.S. Catholic church's child sex abuse scandal, Bishop Robert Finn had an impressive climb up the church's hierarchy and established a reputation as one of the church's most conservative voices.

On Tuesday, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had accepted Finn's resignation, marking an end to one of the ugliest chapters in the church's child sexual abuse scandal.

The Vatican did not explain the reason for allowing Finn to resign. He is nearly 13 years short of the normal retirement age for bishops.

In 2012, Finn, who shepherded the Kansas City-area diocese for a decade, became the highest ranking clergyman convicted in relation to the scandal, when a judge found him guilty of a misdemeanor for failing to report the sexual abuse of a child to authorities.

A native of St. Louis, Finn, 62, was ordained a priest in 1979. He served as an associate pastor at two parishes in the archdiocese of St. Louis before joining the faculty at St. Francis Borgia Regional High School in Washington, Mo., from 1983 to 1989.

He earned a master's degree in education administration from St. Louis University in 1989 and became administrator of St. Dominic High School in O'Fallon, Mo. That same year he was also named editor of the St. Louis Review, the weekly diocesan newspaper.

In 1996, he was appointed director of continuing formation for priests in the St. Louis Archdiocese.

In 2004, Finn was named by Pope John Paul II as Coadjutor Bishop of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, assisting Bishop Raymond Boland. He became the diocese's sixth bishop when Boland retired in May 2005.

Ahead of his installation as Kansas City bishop, some priests, nuns and church members worried that he was too theologically conservative for the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese, according to news reports at the time.

Finn acknowledged that he was one of a handful of bishops in the country who belonged to the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, the organization for diocesan priest "associates" of Opus Dei, a conservative group that encourages Catholics to practice their Christian principles in their workplaces, according to the Kansas City Star.

After becoming bishop, Finn cut the budget of a center that had trained Catholic laypersons to help in their parishes, banished from the diocesan newspaper the column of a popular University of Notre Dame theologian who often was at odds with the Vatican, and replaced most of his predecessor's leadership team.

When he took the helm of the Kansas City diocese, he spoke about helping the laity transform the culture around them. He was also outspoken in reinforcing the church's opposition to abortion and the use of contraception.

"There's a great decline in the sense of respect of the human person, and it comes across in the most obvious, horrendous acts, like abortion," Finn told the Star in a 2005 interview. "It's seen in so many human rights violations throughout the world and throughout all history (and in) the decline of marriage and the family. I think much of the decline in our own culture was the contraceptive mentality that really began in earnest with the birth control pill and people forgetting that marriage is supposed to bring a husband and wife together in an openness to participate with God in bringing children into the world."

But law enforcement found that Finn fell well short of his duty protecting the Kansas City community's children.

The Kansas City diocese became aware of lewd images of children on diocese priest Shawn Ratigan's computer in December 2010. Instead of reporting it to authorities, Finn ordered Ratigan to undergo psychiatric evaluation and then dispatched him to a convent with orders to have no contact with children.

In May 2011, church officials reported Ratigan to police without getting Finn's permission after learning that the priest was still taking lewd pictures of children.

Ratigan pleaded guilty to five counts of producing child pornography and was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison.

Finn was convicted on one charge of failure to report child abuse in September 2012 and sentenced to two years of probation.

With the conviction, Finn became the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic clergyman convicted of a crime related to the church's decades-old child sexual abuse scandal.