KNOXVILLE (TN)
Knoxville News Sentinel [Knoxville TN]
March 23, 2026
By Tyler Whetstone
- Former Knoxville Bishop Richard Stika’s career was heavily influenced by his mentor, Cardinal Justin Rigali.
- Rigali resigned as cardinal in Philadelphia after a grand jury found he allowed priests accused of sexual abuse to remain in ministry.
- Stika was accused of adopting Rigali’s leadership patterns, including protecting the church over victims and conducting superficial investigations.
Years of deep discord in the Diocese of Knoxville began in St. Louis, the deeply Catholic city where the polarizing former Bishop Richard Stika was born, spent his formative years, returned to after he resigned and died in at the age of 68 in February.
In order to better understand Stika’s rise and spectacular fall as Knoxville’s longest-tenured bishop, Knox News traced his career back to St. Louis, the “Rome of the West,” where Stika’s connections helped put him in position to learn at the feet of one of the most prominent American Catholics, Cardinal Justin Rigali.
Rigali, 90, had an impressive career on paper, but he skated in and out of trouble, blustering his way through scandal. The pattern caught up with him when he resigned as cardinal in Philadelphia, one of the most prestigious posts in the church, after a grand jury said he allowed dozens of priests to remain in active ministry after they were accused of sexual abuse.
Stika quickly found a home for Rigali in Knoxville. And he adopted some of less-appealing aspects of Rigali’s leadership and put them into practice here: He protected the church above all else, conducted superficial investigations into sexual abuse allegations and went on the attack against accusers.
Stika left Knoxville in 2023 after the church forced his resignation due to a series of scandals. He died Feb. 17, asleep on his couch at his home in St. Louis.
St. Louis political connections pave the way
Stika’s political connections came easily.
He was born and raised in southwest St. Louis to a Catholic family. He described his parents as simple people of faith. He had three brothers: two older and one younger.
Stika grew up two doors down from and attended the same Epiphany of Our Lord Parish as Francis Slay, who was first elected to the city’s board of alderman in 1985 and elected mayor of St. Louis in 2001. He served for 16 years, the longest in city history.
Well before Slay became a prominent politician, Stika interacted with the family. Slay’s father was a businessman, state legislator and Democratic power broker in South St. Louis. Slay, through longtime chief of staff Jeff Rainford, declined to talk to Knox News about Stika. Rainford said the former mayor and bishop were not close and they lost touch over the years.
Around the same time Slay began is political rise, Stika served as a St. Louis police chaplain, according to newspaper archives.
By the time Rigali was named archbishop of St. Louis in 1994, a year after Stika began serving as the office’s secretary, he was more than prepared to be the archbishop’s eyes and ears in St. Louis.
For years, Rigali had served in Rome for Pope John Paul II, and when the pontiff visited St. Louis in 1999, it was Stika who was tapped to lead the monumental effort, which was capped by a stadium mass attended by 100,000 people, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Stika took great joy in his role as a top advisor to Rigali.
“My role in St. Louis was to help him adapt from a life working in the Vatican to be an Ordinary – an archbishop,” Stika told the diocesan newspaper, East Tennessee Catholic, in a 2015 interview. “I know St. Louis quite well, so I was able to teach him, I hope, what life was like in St. Louis.”
The archbishop was a father figure to Stika, whose father died in 1986, and a mentor who helped him advance in the church hierarchy. Stika eventually served in the influential role of director of the archdiocese’s Office of Child and Youth Protection and was promoted by Rigali to chancellor and vicar general.
Before Rigali left St. Louis for Philadelphia to became a cardinal, Stika was tapped to lead his own parish in a wealthy St. Louis suburb.
Who is former Cardinal Justin Rigali?
Originally from California, Rigali served 34 years in the Vatican diplomatic corps in Rome, working his way up to becoming a member of bishop and cardinal councils that advise the pope. They are incredibly influential posts.
He eventually became the personal translator for Polish Pope John Paul II, helping refine the pope’s English speeches.
Rigali went from Rome to St. Louis to Philadelphia. But his lasting impact is that of a bishop-maker, someone who used his position to place people around him in positions of power. Dozens of people in Rigali’s orbit became bishops and cardinals.
Knox News was unable to speak with Rigali and a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of St. Louis declined to connect a reporter to him.
Rigali left in disgrace and moved to Knoxville
In early 2011, the Philadelphia district attorney released a scathing grand jury report that detailed how the archdiocese − led by Rigali − covered up for abusive priests and failed to take victims’ accusations seriously. It followed a similarly scathing 2005 grand jury report, though Rigali was not named because the investigation covered years before he became cardinal.
The 2011 report found, among other things, that there at least 37 priests with credible accusations against them of sexual abuse were kept in assignments that put them in contact with children.
Rigali issued a one-paragraph statement assuring “there are no archdiocesan priests in ministry today who have an admitted or established allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against them,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
However, within a month, the newspaper reported, Rigali removed 27 priests from active ministry.
The chair of a lay review board tasked with investigating priest abuse claims in Philadelphia at the time said Rigali and his bishops “failed miserably at being open and transparent. Officials were more interested in protecting the church than getting rid of pedophiles, she said, according to reporting by The Associated Press.
By the summer, Rigali had submitted his resignation. He soon moved into Stika’s West Knoxville home. The two sent out annual Christmas cards, which typically included photos of the two of them with their dogs.
What came next was predictable, said Anne Barrett Doyle, codirector of bishopaccountability.org, an online public library of information that details the Catholic clergy abuse crisis. Rigali learned to protect the church from his time in Rome and Stika learned from him.
“It’s important to note that Rigali didn’t invent cover-up − he merely passed it on to his protege,” Doyle told Knox News in a text message.
“The 2018 Pennsylvania AG’s investigation of six dioceses found evidence of a de facto ‘playbook’ for covering up abuse. To varying degrees, every bishop we have researched has followed it, and that’s because it was designed by the Vatican itself,” she continued. “To this day, canon law prioritizes secrecy and protection of accused priests, even when those actions devastate victims and expose children to sexual assault.”
Richard Stika copied leadership patterns from Rigali, his mentor
John Salveson was the director of the Philadelphia chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests from 2002-06, when Rigali was cardinal. Rigali didn’t create the problems laid out in the 2005 report, he said, but the church never made recommended changes. When the 2011 report was released, Salveson was floored.
“I said, ‘Oh shit, they kept doing it. They keep hiding people,’ he told Knox News. “(The 2005 report) was a bombshell, and they didn’t change. Even I was shocked, and there’s no one more cynical than me.
“What I find so astounding about this issue is if you owned a day care center with six locations and you discovered you had an abusive teacher, like, you wouldn’t think about moving him to another day care center,” he continued. “We have somehow normalized that’s just what they did.”
Instead of getting rid of people, Salveson said, Rigali failed as a leader because he went into risk management mode.
Protect the church over caring for victims
Stika also acted in ways to protect the institution and though he promised to be “as transparent as possible” when he arrived, he was not.
After a former seminarian was accused of raping a former church employee, Stika went on the offensive, removing a third-party investigator from the case and actively worked to discredit the man who made the accusations.
According to a lawsuit, which has since been dropped, Stika admitted that he told a room full of priests that the man who said he was raped by a seminarian was the predator, not the other way around.
The diocese never denied that Stika said this to priests. Instead, the church argued in legal filings that Stika “accurately reflected his opinion and understanding of the underlying circumstances and events based upon the information that was available to him at the time.”
Conduct haphazard investigations
The 2011 Philadelphia grand jury report noted the archdiocese had a number of misguided procedures for its investigations, noting specifically that the church’s policy was to not interview an accused abuser.
“The explanation we were given for this policy is that it might ‘put the priest in position of admitting his guilt,” the report said. “In contrast to this kid-glove treatment of the abuser, victims are virtually hounded to give statements.”
Diocese officials under Stika had the opposite problem. Instead of not speaking with the accused abusers, it was people who said they were abused who were given the silent treatment. This practice made any sort of investigation one-sided and incomplete.
Neither person in the John Doe (seminarian) and Jane Doe (Gatlinburg priest) abuse allegation cases − which were dropped and dismissed by a jury, respectively − were interviewed by church investigators. This was keeping in line with prior instances. Michael Boyd settled with the church in 2019 after he alleged he was sexually abused as a child by two priests. He never was interviewed by church officials, according to The Associated Press.
Make life miserable for accusers
In St. Louis in 2002, an accused priest vigorously fought allegations that he sexually abused a parishioner. In the run up to the statue of limitations in the case, the priest sought advice from the archdiocese about whether he could sue the accuser for defamation, according to a 2010 report by the New York Times, which provided source documents along with its reporting.
In a statement, the priest said Jesus’ command to “turn the other cheek” was not to mean that followers’ lives should be “used as doormats.” He would not seek a financial settlement, he said, just that the accuser would retract their statements.
“We must all take responsibility for our actions,” he wrote. “If I had done to my accuser what he claims I did, I would have to suffer the consequences. In fairness, he should now take responsibility for what he has done.”
Rigali signed off on the lawsuit and appeared to approve of church funds to pay for it, the documents show. The accuser countersued the priest two years later. In a settlement with the court, both men dropped their lawsuits and the church paid $22,500 for the accuser’s counseling, according to The New York Times report.
In Knoxville, under Stika’s leadership, diocesan attorneys successfully pushed for John Doe to be named in legal documents, robbing him of anonymity as he faced off against the diocese. Sex abuse victims advocates told Knox News the move was meant to intimidate the man who sued and future victims.
Beyond that, a year after he left Knoxville, Stika continued to make his presence felt by threatening whistleblowers with lawsuits, including one who was a key witness.
In a text message to a Knox News reporter, Stika took offense to the notion that he threatened anyone.
“Did not threaten at all. Just informed them about a possible lawsuit but I have decided not to include them in a lawsuit,” he said.
Before Knoxville, Bishop O’Connell was credibly accused of sex abuse
In 1996, while Bishop Anthony J. O’Connell was serving Knoxville, a Missouri man who said O’Connell sexually abused him as a teen in the 1970s reached a secret settlement with the Diocese of Jefferson City for $125,000, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and New York Times reported in 2002. Jefferson City is under the archdiocese of St. Louis, which was under the control of Rigali.
It would be nearly impossible for Rigali, who was credited in St. Louis for his strict financial management of the diocese, not to know about such a settlement, which would be worth roughly $263,000 today after inflation.
It was during this time that Stika was Rigali’s personal secretary and lived with Rigali, according to interviews the two gave.
The news of O’Connell’s abuse was never acknowledged until the victim told The Post-Dispatch in 2002. A week later, O’Connell resigned, admitting he had “inappropriate contact” with a teenager while he was rector of a seminary in Missouri.
O’Connell ultimately was sued at least three times and at least six former students accused him of sexual abuse in interviews with lawyers or the Post-Dispatch, the newspaper reported in an explosive 2004 investigation. He is now listed on the Diocese of Jefferson City’s list of priests who have been credibly accused or removed from ministry.
O’Connell died in 2012.
In 2019, Boyd sued the Knoxville diocese, asserting he was repeatedly sexually abused over multiple years in the 1990s by longtime Knoxville priest Xavier Mankel and on at least two occasions, by O’Connell while he was bishop. The lawsuit was settled out of court months later.
Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter focused on accountability journalism. Email: tyler.whetstone@knoxnews.com; X: @tyler_whetstone; Signal: twhetstone141924.39