MINNESOTA
City Pages

By Jesse Marx
Fri., Aug. 15 2014

Father Thomas Stitts had been dead for mere days before his colleagues began digging up his spirit.

In a “STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL” memo dated November 22, 1985, then-Bishop Robert Carlson writes of Stitts’s possible exploits with boys. Rumors were circulating that, before the cancer got him, Stitts had come clean about his “moral activity” and named similarly abusive priests in a letter.

Carlson’s memo draws no definitive conclusion, but suggests that a choir director burned the confession to avoid scandal.

What remains of the priest’s secret personnel file — released Thursday as part of an upcoming lawsuit — is open to interpretation. Stitts is a more mysterious figure than the other priests who’ve been scrutinized over the last year. He seems to have been intensely private.

But it’s also clear from reading his file that he was deeply…