MINNESOTA
Monticello Times
By Tim Hennagir
December 26, 2013
Harry Walsh, former pastor and music director of St. Henry Catholic Church in Monticello, has denied a list of claims made against him in a recent news report.
Walsh provided an emailed statement to the Monticello Times last Friday (Dec. 20) that stated the following: “I am saddened by the Dec.19, 2013, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) report. I am sad that facts are brushed aside and skewed to advance a narrative unrelated to me, and sad that sensationalism trivializes the real and important work that I do. Any allegations of abuse by me are unfounded.”
Walsh added: “I am not going to address every misstatement from the MPR report and [a] subsequent Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis press release, but I do want to address the two allegations and my decision to seek laicization [removal of rights to exercise the functions of an ordained ministry.]”
While Walsh’s name wasn’t on a recently released list of priests credibly accused of sexually abusing minors, MPR presented church documents that contained information he had been accused in the 1990s of molesting a 15-year-old girl in Detroit in the mid-1960s and a 12-year-old altar boy in in South St. Paul the early 1980s. The archdiocese contributed to a financial settlement for the girl in 1996, MPR reported in its investigative story, adding two archbishops allowed him to continue working in parishes until the fall of 2011.
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