MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star

September 8
BY MARK MORRIS
The Kansas City Star

A disgraced Catholic priest who produced child pornography should be sentenced to 50 years in prison, federal prosecutors say.

Neither Shawn Ratigan’s vow of chastity nor his advanced education stopped him from taking lewd photographs of five little girls over an almost six-year period, Assistant U.S. Attorney Katharine Fincham argued in a biting sentencing memorandum filed in federal court.

Fincham urged U.S. District Judge Gary Fenner to disregard the report of an expert hired by Ratigan’s defense lawyer to soften the sentence for the 47-year-old cleric.

That expert, Fincham observed, had “wistfully” noted that the word “Ratigan” means “caretakers of the church.”

“This Ratigan photographed Jane Doe #2 without any pants on next to a stained glass window in the choir loft of a church in which Ratigan was the pastor,” Fincham wrote….