MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune
By: Madeleine Baran, MPR.org/100.5 FM
When beloved priest Harry Walsh retired two years ago, parishioners of St. Henry’s Catholic Church in Monticello, Minn., decorated a VFW hall with paper shamrocks and musical notes to say goodbye.
They sang, gave speeches and cried. Walsh, then 77, had served as the parish’s music minister for nearly a decade.
“You developed close personal relationships with everybody and that gave us all the ability to trust you with all of our personal lives,” one person wrote on a tribute website for the Irish-born priest. “You have blessed this community immeasurably.”
But Walsh had a secret. He’d been accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl and 12-year-old altar boy decades earlier, resulting in a financial settlement for the girl, according to church documents obtained by MPR News. Nonetheless, Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis archbishops Harry Flynn and John Nienstedt allowed him to continue working in parishes until the fall of 2011. And neither bishop called police or warned the public.
More recently, Walsh’s name was not included on a list of 30 “credibly accused” priests released Dec. 5 by the archdiocese.
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