MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Editorial

The Cathedral of St. Paul serves the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, which contains more than 200 parishes with about 825,000 Catholics.

Criminal charges against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis have been a long time coming. Evidence of what Ramsey County Attorney John Choi called “institutional failure” to protect children from abusive priests has been accumulating for years.

Yet while not surprising, Choi’s announcement Friday that he has charged the archdiocese with six gross misdemeanor counts in connection with its oversight of former priest Curtis Wehmeyer is stunning for its courage. By asserting the bedrock principle of American justice that no one is above the law, Choi is proposing to hold one of St. Paul’s most powerful institutions to account.

Wehmeyer is now in prison after being convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing two boys whose mother worked with him at Blessed…