MINNESOTA
Bilgrimage
[with video]
William D. Lindsey
The story told in the video above is one to which a valued reader of this blog alerted me yesterday. The report is from KMSP (Fox News) in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. As you’ll see when you watch the video, a reporter from this news outlet, Tom Lyden, interviews a cousin of deposed Twin Cities archbishop John Nienstedt — Mike Hinske — who maintains that a priest-friend of Nienstedt’s, Samuel Ritchey, sexually abused him when he was 16 years old. Lyden also interviews an unwilling Nienstedt.
According to Hinske, Ritchey told him at the time that he had other “special friends,” who were, it was clear to Hinske, also minors. Ritchey went on to teach at Catholic schools in the diocese of Columbus, Ohio, where he was eventually removed from the priesthood due to his abuse of teenaged boys.
As you’ll also learn when you watch the video, Mike Hinske reports that he told his mother, a former Dominican nun who was Nienstedt’s cousin (and who is now dead), and his sister Mary Beth that Ritchey had molested him, and they informed Nienstedt of what had happened to Hinske. Nienstedt did nothing — and now claims that it was not clear to him that Hinske was actually molested, or that Hinske wanted him to do something.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.