UNITED STATES
Crux
By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor June 15, 2015
On Monday, two more American bishops lost their jobs while facing charges of failing to respond appropriately to accusations of child abuse lodged against personnel under their supervision.
More colloquially, they stepped down amid controversy related not to the crime, but the cover-up.
The resignations of Archbishop John Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Anthony Piche of St. Paul-Minneapolis come less than two months after the exit under similar circumstances of Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri.
In 2012, Finn had become the lone American bishop to be criminally convicted on a misdemeanor charge of delaying to report an allegation of child abuse. Last month, prosecutors charged the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese under Nienstedt as a corporation for having ignored repeated reports of inappropriate behavior by a priest who was later convicted of molesting two boys.
According to an American clearinghouse on the abuse scandals called BishopAccountability.org, Nienstedt and Piche become the 17th and 18th bishops to resign after being publicly criticized for covering up child abuse.
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