MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

03/09/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

In November of 2013, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis announced that it had hired Kinsale Management Consulting to conduct a review of all its clergy files as part of its ‘ongoing efforts’ to ‘address the issue of clergy misconduct’. According to news reports at the time, the review was to begin in December of 2013 and would include all clergy in active ministry. Later reports indicated that the review was expanded to include all clergy active after 1970.

Some of the results of this review were quick to become public, and would have been unsurprising to those familiar with Archdiocesan personnel files. Less than a month after the review began, Fathers Joseph Gallatin and Mark Wehmann were placed on leave from their parish assignments. Father Ken LaVan, accused of sexual abuse of minor girls in the 1980s but permitted to remain…