FORT WORTH (TX)
The Dallas Morning News
August 9, 2018
By Julieta Chiquillo
A Catholic priest in Prosper was forced to resign under duress for urging a fellow clergyman to stop having an affair with a church worker and to report his actions to church authorities, according to a letter the priest’s attorney has sent to the bishop of Fort Worth that is circulating widely in Catholic circles in the far northern suburbs.
Bishop Michael Olson made the wrong decision to force the resignation of Rev. Richard Kirkham earlier this summer, Kirkham’s attorney John Walsh wrote.
“The actions of your office mirror the same destructive actions by other Catholic bishops over the past 40 years that embroiled the Catholic Church in the priest sexual abuse scandal that irreparably harmed the Church’s reputation,” Walsh wrote to Olson in a June 9 letter.
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