MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Ruben Rosario
POSTED: 09/23/2014
The two men, the embattled archbishop and perhaps his harshest critic, briefly walked around Crocus Hill before settling on a bench near the Cathedral of St. Paul.
There were no lawyers. There were no handlers. It was just two men conversing on a bench.
Bob Schwiderski, who prefers to call himself a survivor, and not a victim, of clergy sexual abuse, did most of the talking at the Aug. 20 meeting. John Nienstedt, who heads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, did most of the listening.
Schwiderski is a former altar boy from Hector, Minn. He was repeatedly molested in the early 1960s by a now long-deceased priest also suspected of victimizing others during his parish assignments in Hector, Green Valley and other locales decades ago. Schwiderski has over the years carved a niche as the state’s most outspoken crusader for survivors like himself.
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