MISSOURI
National Catholic Reporter
Dennis Coday | Sep. 15, 2015
KANSAS CITY, MO.
Bishop James V. Johnston, the newly named bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., comes to the job familiar with the grim realities of the sex abuse scandal, having served a bishop who resigned in 2002 after admitting that he abused teen age boys.
Johnston hails from Knoxville, Tenn., a diocese erected in 1988. Its first bishop was Anthony O’Connell, who served there from 1988 until 1998 when he was transferred to Palm Beach, Fla. It was in Palm Beach in 2002 that O’Connell revealed that he had molested teen-aged seminarians decades before when he served as rector of Hannibal, Mo., high school seminary.
O’Connell resigned in 2002 and was ordered to a life of private prayer in Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, S.C., where he died in 2012 at age 74.
Johnston was one of the first priests O’Connell ordained in Knoxville, and he served O’Connell as vicar of clergy and chancellor.
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