MINNESOTA
MinnPost
With the announcement Tuesday that Archbishop John Nienstedt is stepping down while police investigate allegations that he touched a young man inappropriately, the sex-abuse scandal sweeping through the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis ratcheted to a new level, according to abuse survivors’ advocates and prosecutors.
Even as observers speculated whether Nienstedt would retain enough credibility to return to ministry if cleared of allegations he touched a boy during a public photo shoot, St. Paul Police Chief Tom Smith blasted the archdiocese for failing to cooperate with its efforts to investigate other abuse allegations.
Smith shared a Dec. 4 letter to Nienstedt in which the chief complained that church leaders had repeatedly tried to speak to the church official responsible for investigating sex-abuse allegations. Without more information, police would have a hard time obtaining search warrants, the chief said.
Police refused to address the allegations against Nienstedt himself, though, saying only that adequate resources had been assigned to investigating the pending cases. Even the Archbishop’s most vocal critics cautioned that there’s nowhere near enough evidence to speculate about the claim. ,,,
‘They’re usually treated as different or special’
“Sometimes they hunker down, sometimes they resign,” said Terry McKiernan, president of Bishop-accountability.org, a watchdog group that has tracked the allegations for years. “But to treat them as a priest — that usually doesn’t happen. They’re usually treated as different or special.”
Complaints lodged against the vast majority of the bishops whose cases are cataloged by the group have not been conclusively resolved. In many, an internal church investigation failed to substantiate the claims, which are virtually always denied.
Two other things stand out as unusual for McKiernan. For starters, if the Vatican was not tracking the Twin Cities scandal before now — entirely possible given that there are some 4,000 bishops around the world — the new allegation is almost certainly under discussion in Rome, he said.
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