MINNESOTA
National Catholic Reporter
Brian Roewe | Nov. 4, 2013
Attempts in the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese to take hold of a snowballing sexual abuse scandal have done little to quiet a growing clamor for a change in leadership.
Since the end of summer, Archbishop John Nienstedt and his predecessors, as well as other archdiocesan leaders, have drawn intense criticism for their handling of allegations of clergy sexual abuse of minors in recent decades, particularly when they were presented with suspicious behavior or apparent evidence of abuse.
Amid a stream of media reports — largely fueled by accounts and documents from former archdiocesan canon lawyer Jennifer Haselberger (NCR, Oct. 25-Nov. 7) — Nienstedt’s first response came in appointing Dominican Fr. Reginald Whitt vicar of ministerial standards, and assigning him to select an independent lay task force to review archdiocesan policies and procedures related to abuse allegations.
But the shine of that move soon wore off after a letter Whitt sent Oct. 21 to archdiocesan clergy led to questions about how independent the six-member task force would be. Addressing access to individual priest files, he wrote: “Access to these files will be within my control, and limited only to what is necessary for the Task Force to be able to make an informed decision with respect to their policy review.”
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