MINNESOTA
The Wild Reed
Michael J. Bayly
Earlier today my friends Lisa (above), Paula, and I gathered on the steps of the Cathedral of St. Paul with members and supporters of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). Here we distributed leaflets expressing a number of concerns about Archbishop Nienstedt’s response to recent sex abuse and cover-up scandals in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis.
Lisa’s sign points to the fact that at the same time last year that Archbishop Nienstedt was actively campaigning to deny civil marriage rights to same-sex couples, he and his administration failed to warn parishioners of a priest, Curtis Wehmeyer, with a history of sexual misconduct. Wehmeyer is now serving five years after being convicted of sexually abusing two boys and possessing child pornography. Throughout his ultimately unsuccessful anti-marriage equality campaign, the archbishop declared that granting civil marriage rights, benefits, and responsibilities to same-sex couples would threaten what he (and others) call “traditional marriage.”
During this same time period, Archbishop Nienstedt failed to alert police to certain pornographic images confiscated from the computer of a second priest, Jonathan Shelley. It’s since been revealed that Archdiocesan leaders debated internally for a year whether some of the images met the legal definition of child pornography. In early 2012 Jennifer Haselberger, Chancellor for Canonical Affairs, examined the images which at that time were being stored in the basement of the chancery. She determined that some of them were “definitely ‘borderline’ child pornography” and showed them to both Archbishop Nienstedt and Vicar General Peter Laird. In response, Laird ordered Haselberger to hand the images over to him.
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