MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Ruben Rosario
rrosario@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 04/17/2014

Many well-intentioned reports urging change are only as good as their implementation.

Which gives me an opening here to address the findings released this week by the seven-member Safe Environment and Ministerial Standards task force. The panel was assigned to look into how the local archdiocese mishandled clergy child abuse and misconduct cases in recent years and to recommend changes.

Not surprisingly, the task force found “serious shortcomings” in the way the archdiocese handled the cases of one priest found with adult pornography in his possession and another priest arrested, convicted and serving time for abusing minors while a pastor in a parish on St. Paul’s East Side.

Conducting criminal background checks on priests every six years, creating an anonymous abuse complaint hotline, making the Delegate for a Safe Environment a mandated reporter and having all misconduct allegations…