MINNESOTA
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Haselberger Affidavit: Attempt to Have Father Tegeder Declared Disabled for Opposing Archbishop’s Campaign Against Marriage Equality, While Known Threat to Minors, Father Wehmeyer, Remained in Ministry
William D. Lindsey
There’s a significant detail tucked away in Jennifer Haselberger’s lengthy affidavit (significant to me, if to no one else) that I’d like to bring to readers’ attention: a section of the affidavit (§ 72) directly counters a claim made by Archbishop Nienstedt’s attorney in Nienstedt’s deposition that the archbishop does not have the power to declare a priest disabled. Haselberger notes that, after his attorney made this claim, Nienstedt himself added that he didn’t understand questions directed to him about his prerogative as archbishop to declare a priest disabled.
Haselberger states flatly that “the Archbishop was in error” about this matter of fact, and that he had every reason to understand full well that declaring a priest disabled is “the exclusive prerogative of the Archbishop.” He would have known this, she asserts, because she herself had made this point in two memos to him between 2010 and 2011.
The subject of those memos? The discussion was not about, as one might imagine, having a pedophile priest known to be abusing minors declared disabled, so that he could be removed from ministry.
Haselberger states that she wrote Nienstedt at the prompting of the former vicar general and moderator of the curia of the archdiocese, Father Peter Laird, who resigned that position last October when it was reported by Minnesota NPR that Laird had information about the abuse of minors by fellow priest Curtis Wehmeyer, and did not turn this information over to criminal authorities. Haselberger’s affidavit says that Laird prompted her to write Nienstedt because he
wanted the Archbishop to declare Father Michael Tegeder disabled as a means of silencing his opposition to the Archbishop’s efforts to promote a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage.
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