MINNESOTA
City Pages
By Jesse Marx
Fri., Aug. 15 2014
Father Thomas Stitts had been dead for mere days before his colleagues began digging up his spirit.
In a “STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL” memo dated November 22, 1985, then-Bishop Robert Carlson writes of Stitts’s possible exploits with boys. Rumors were circulating that, before the cancer got him, Stitts had come clean about his “moral activity” and named similarly abusive priests in a letter.
Carlson’s memo draws no definitive conclusion, but suggests that a choir director burned the confession to avoid scandal.
What remains of the priest’s secret personnel file — released Thursday as part of an upcoming lawsuit — is open to interpretation. Stitts is a more mysterious figure than the other priests who’ve been scrutinized over the last year. He seems to have been intensely private.
But it’s also clear from reading his file that he was deeply troubled, and that his superiors worried about him openly.
In 1979, for instance, then-Archbishop John Roach wrote, “I am very pleased to hear that the whole issue that you and I discussed has worked out,” meaning an allegation of abuse. “I would add only one thing,” Roach continued, “and that is that if there is something you feel you ought to be facing that you be sure to get some help.”
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