KANSAS CITY (MO)
Independent Catholic News (UK)
Posted: Monday, February 17, 2014
A petition signed by more than 113,000 people, and a letter from a group of parishioners and religious in Kansas City, Missouri, has been sent to Pope Francis this week urging him to take disciplinary action against Bishop Robert W Finn, who was convicted in 2012 of failing to report a priest who was an active paedophile, the Kansas City Star and New York Times report.
Bishop Finn was found guilty on a misdemeanour charge for failing to inform authorities after he learned there were hundreds of pornographic pictures of young girls and toddlers on a laptop belonging to Fr Shawn Ratigan. He was given two years of court-supervised probation. Ratigan has begun a 50-year prison sentence.
The group ask why Pope Francis suspended a German bishop who spent many millions of Euros building his luxurious quarters, but left in office a bishop who failed to protect children. They argue that Bishop Finn also broke church law and should be subject to a penal proceeding.
The request to the Pope was initiated by Fr James E Connell, a priest and canon lawyer in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, who belongs to a newly-formed group of Catholic priests, religious and laypeople called Catholic Whistleblowers.
Father Connell cited Canon 1389 in the church’s Code of Canon Law, which says that a person who through ‘culpable negligence’ harms another person by performing or omitting his ‘ecclesiastical power’ is to be given a ‘just penalty’. Fr Connell said he cited this canon because it was recently mentioned by Bishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s former chief prosecutor, as a means of holding church officials accountable.
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