MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 07/23/2014
Michael G. Kolar, a former priest who directed the Catholic Youth Center in St. Paul, was kept in ministry even after officials learned he had sexually abused underage girls beginning in the 1970s, according to documents released Wednesday as part of a lawsuit.
The documents also reveal Kolar told officials that Monsignor J. Jerome Boxleitner, the former head of Catholic Charities, tried to rape him at his lake cabin when Kolar was in seminary. Boxleitner died in 2013.
Kolar, 70, asked to be removed from the priesthood in 1992. He later married and currently lives in St. Paul.
One woman alleged in a 1991 lawsuit that she was abused by Kolar beginning in 1972 when she went on a retreat to the Catholic Youth Center as a 10th-grader. That suit was dismissed after a judge determined the statute of limitations had run out.
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