UNITED STATES
Religion News Service
Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt resigns after charges over abuse scandal
By David Gibson | Religion News Service June 15
The Vatican on Monday (June 15) launched a major housecleaning of the scandal-plagued Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, accepting the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt along with that of a top Nienstedt aide, Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piche.
The moves come a little over a week after authorities charged the archdiocese for failing to protect children from an abusive priest and days after Pope Francis unveiled the first-ever system for disciplining bishops who do not act against predator clerics.
A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters he did not know whether Nienstedt and Piche would be subject to further canonical investigation under the new process. “The situation is too complex to make a prediction on this yet,” he said, according to the Catholic news site Crux. …
Observers say these latest moves seem to signal an unprecedented effort by Rome to hold bishops accountable in the abuse crisis.
“I think this is a great tribute to Pope Francis,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, one of the pontiff’s top allies in the U.S. hierarchy, said when asked about Nienstedt’s resignation.
Wuerl was speaking at a conference bringing together bishops and labor leaders at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington to talk about the economy.
Wuerl said that while the Catholic Church has done a good job of addressing the problem of abusive priests, “What the pope has done is assure this also includes those responsible for supervision.”
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