Church attorney says then-Bishop John Cummins of Oakland bore primary responsibility for protecting children from Stephen Kiesle, a priest who admitted to molesting two boys.
Los Angeles Times
11 April 2010
John S. Cummins, former bishop of the diocese of Oakland, recalls correspondence from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger regarding troubled priest Stephen Kiesle. (Marcio Jose Sanchez, Associated Press / April 9, 2010)A Vatican lawyer said that it was the local bishop, John Cummins of Oakland, who bore primary responsibility for protecting children from the abusive priest, Stephen Kiesle, and that the pope, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had acted appropriately when he declined to take immediate action.
“It’s the job of the bishop to discipline the priest,” said the lawyer, Jeffrey S. Lena of Berkeley, in an e-mail to The Times. “The pope is not a five star general ordering his troops around. That is simply an incorrect idea about the allocation of authority as between the pope and his fellow bishops.”
Cummins, now 82 and retired, had written to Ratzinger in the early 1980s, when the future pope was the Vatican’s top official in charge of doctrinal enforcement, asking that the Vatican agree to Kiesle’s request that he be “laicized,” or defrocked. Kiesle had already been relieved of his duties as a priest after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd contact stemming from the molestation of two boys, ages 11 and 12.
Ratzinger had replied that although the matter was of “grave significance,” he needed more time and information before deciding whether to grant the request. It was granted two years later.
In the interim and for a period afterward, Kiesle was allowed to volunteer at a parish in the Bay Area town of Pinole, where he was later accused of having abused children.
Benedict has come under a chorus of criticism in recent weeks as documents have exposed what some perceive as his inadequate response to sexual abuse cases while archbishop of Munich, Germany, and later as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In every case, the Vatican has suggested that responsibility fell on lower-ranking officials.
Cummins could not be reached for comment Saturday. He told the Associated Press previously that he “didn’t really care for” Kiesle and didn’t recall having written to Ratzinger about him.
In his e-mail, Lena, the lawyer, said it would have been normal for Ratzinger to weigh a request for defrocking carefully and deliberately.
It is, he said, “a rigorous canonical process of deep religious significance that in many instances takes time, particularly in the pre-electronic communication age. . . . It is not like simply taking off a collar, or firing a person from a job.”
Moreover, Lena said, defrocking is not the primary way the church disciplines priests. “It is an important mechanism for ridding the priesthood of malefactor priests,” he said. “But it is not the primary mechanism of protection of children.”
Rick Simons, who represented two victims who filed lawsuits against Kiesle, disputed the Vatican’s defense of the letter and the characterization that it was up to the local bishop to protect children from abusers like Kiesle.
“They never expressed any concern for the victims of this child molester, and instead said, ‘Gee, it’ll bring a scandal on the church,’ ” he said Saturday.
“Protecting children is everybody’s job. The bishops in this case are trying to protect the kids by getting this molester out of the cloak of authority, and the Vatican is standing in the way.”
mitchell.landsberg
@latimes.com
Pope delayed punishing priest
The Straits Times (Singapore)
11 April 2010
WASHINGTON – POPE Benedict XVI and his predecessor John Paul II both repeatedly delayed defrocking a priest who abused young boys and girls in California, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
A series of letters released by attorney Jeff Anderson to AFP on Friday showed repeated misgivings concerning the conduct of California priest Stephen Kiesle raised by senior officials from the Oakland diocese during the early 1980s.
John Cummins, the former bishop of Oakland, California asked that he be defrocked in 1981. But four years later, the future Pope Benedict XVI, then a top Vatican official, said the case needed more time and that the final decision should consider ‘the good of the Universal Church.’ Bishop Cummins said the Vatican was very reluctant at the time to dismiss priests because so many were abandoning the priesthood.
The late pope John Paul II also ‘really slowed down the process and made it much more deliberate,’ Bishop Cummins told the Times.
Bishop Cummins sent a letter to the Vatican in June 1981 petitioning his superiors to defrock Kiesle, citing a 1978 court case where he had pleaded no contest to abusing six children aged between 11 and 13, according to the court documents obtained by AFP. A further letter sent by Bishop Cummins in Feb 1982 to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – who at the time was responsible for enforcing Roman Catholic doctrine and went on to become Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 – again urged Kiesle to be defrocked.
‘It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted,’ Bishop Cummins wrote, warning there ‘might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry.’ Kiesle was eventually defrocked in 1987. He later worked as a youth coordinator at a parish in Pinole, northern California for eight months, said Mr Anderson, who represented two of Kiesle’s victims in a civil action against the Oakland Diocese. — AFP