UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary
Posted by Joelle Casteix on June 15, 2015
My email was flooded this morning with news that St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John C. Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee A. Piché had resigned. If you haven’t been following the news, the archdiocese has been hammered during the past two years as legal disclosures showed that ng a bad week
Less than two weeks ago, prosecutors filed criminal charges against the archdiocese. Although Nienstedt and Piché were not charged, the complaint outlined how both men knew about abuse and did little to nothing to protect children.
This morning, the Vatican announced that they had accepted the men’s resignations.
The resignations a positive moves and show a huge step in the right direction when it comes to punishing church officials who covered up abuse. Following on the heals of the resignation of Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn, these ousters are well-needed, if not very overdue.
But Francis is not a brave reformer.
Before you wag your fingers at me and say, “Gee, Joelle! Why are you always so critical? Francis is doing great things. He’s different,” we need to take note of some very important facts:
1) The Vatican was not the group that exposed the wrongdoing of these bishops.
The ONLY reason we know about Finn is because brave prosecutors did the right thing and charged him with child endangerment. No one in the Vatican was going to do a thing. In fact, none of Finn’s fellow bishops called on law enforcement indict Finn for covering up child pornography. Even after the conviction, Finn’s fellow bishops said nothing in support of the victims.
2) The only reason we know about the scope and scale of crimes in Minnesota is because of their three-year civil window for victims.
Recently Minnesota passed The Child Victims’ Act, a three-year “window” that allows victims of child sex crimes to use the civil court to expose their abusers and get justice, no matter when the abuse occurred.
As more and more victims came forward to file child sex abuse and cover-up lawsuits, their attorneys were able to get access to and expose THOUSANDS of secret internal church documents that outlined how men like Nienstedt and former vicar general Kevin McDonough knew about abuse and abusers and did NOTHING to protect children at risk.
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