UNITED STATES
The Dallas Morning News
Rudolph Bush
Only a week has passed since Pope Francis declared a new tribunal to review cases of bishops who shielded pedophile priests and shuffled them around parishes to protect them from discovery.
And just two weeks have passed since prosecutors in St. Paul, Minn. accused the Catholic Archdiocese there of “willfully ignoring signs of a pedophile priest,” according to a story in the New York Times.
In a signal that the Vatican is at last catching up to the concerns of the faithful, both Archbishop John Nienstedt and Lee Piche, an auxiliary bishop, resigned in St. Paul yesterday.
Nienstedt suggested the decision was his own. The facts, and his longtime reticence to resign, suggest otherwise.
“In order to give the Archdiocese a new beginning amidst the many challenges we face, I have submitted my resignation as Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis to our Holy Father, Pope Francis, and I have just received word that he has accepted it,” Nienstedt wrote.
He added that he leaves the church with a clear conscience.
It will be up to prosecutors to show whether that clear conscience is warranted.
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