St. Louis Archbishop Carlson implicated …

MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

St. Louis Archbishop Carlson implicated in child sex abuse claim in Minnesota

By Jesse Bogan jbogan@post-dispatch.com 314-340-825513

Archbishop Robert J. Carlson conducts the Anointing of Hands rite on the Rev. Joseph Xiu Hui Jiang during a ceremony at the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis to ordain eight men into the priesthood on May 29, 2010. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson didn’t report a clergy sex abuse claim to police in the 1980s when he was a leader with the Roman Catholic Church in Minnesota, according to a lawsuit filed there Tuesday. And the same priest in question allegedly went on to do more harm.
Carlson “went along to get along, and he got along quite well,” attorney Jeff Anderson, who is representing the most recent alleged victim, said of the St. Louis archbishop.

The lawsuit filed by “Jane Doe 23” claims the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis was negligent for allowing the Rev. Robert M. Thurner to work as a priest — with access to children — after he admitted to then-Archbishop John Roach that he bought a 16-year-old boy alcohol and sexually abused him.

Carlson, who came to St. Louis in 2009 from Saginaw, Mich., previously served as an auxiliary bishop in Minnesota, where he grew up. Carlson is named in the lawsuit as one of four church leaders who “learned or should have learned that Thurner had abused at least one child.”

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