MINNESOTA
dotCommonweal
February 26, 2014
Grant Gallicho
In early December a judge ordered the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to release its list of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse. Plaintiffs’ attorneys received the names in a 2009 lawsuit, but the court sealed the list. The archdiocese long fought its release, but reversed course after Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reported that for years bishops had failed to inform police about a priest who had admitted to molesting boys. Archbishop John Nienstedt made the list public on December 5. It included the names of thirty-three men. But last week MPR reported that the actual number of accused priests was seventy. “Some of the…men remain in ministry,” according to MPR. “Others are long dead.” They worked in nearly every parish in the archdiocese.
(The same judge also ordered the archdiocese to release the names of all priests accused of abuse–not just those “credibly accused”–by February 18. The archdiocese appealed the order on that date, and has until February 26 to provide answers to a judge’s questions.)
The archdiocese disputes MPR’s account. In a statement released the day after MPR published its report online, the archdiocese claimed that “the twenty-eight clergy members identified by MPR have not been publicly disclosed by the archdiocese because they do not, to date, constitute substantiated claims of sexual abuse of a minor.” The statement continued: “At least sixteen of the twenty-eight clergy members identified by MPR were the subject of false, meritless or unsubstantiated accusations against them.”
What about the other twelve? “Over ten” of them, the archdiocese claims, “are not from our archdiocese and the allegations against them concern alleged conduct that occurred outside of this archdiocese.” Still, they worked in the Twin Cities. According to the statement, such priests “are subject to the authority of other orders and dioceses and…the archdiocese does not have sufficient information or even jurisdiction to determine whether those foreign claims are credible or have been substantiated.”
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