As a senior Vatican official in the 1980s, the future Pope Benedict XVI was reluctant to defrock a California priest accused of sexually abusing children, correspondence released by lawyers for the victims appeared to show on Friday.
A series of letters released by attorney Jeff Anderson showed repeated misgivings concerning the conduct of priest Stephen Kiesle raised by senior officials from the Oakland diocese during the early 1980s.
In a letter sent by Oakland Bishop John Cummins to the Vatican in June 1981, he petitioned authorities to defrock Kiesle, citing a 1978 court case where he had pleaded no contest to abusing six children aged from 11 to 13.
A further letter sent by Cummins in February 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,” Cummins wrote, warning there “might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry.”
An additional request for action against Kiesle was sent in September 1982, only to receive a “rather curt” reply that the matter “would be examined at an opportune time” according to internal correspondence in the Oakland diocese.
By 1985 — four years after the initial letter — Oakland diocese officials were still awaiting word from the Vatican over the status of the petition requesting Kiesle’s defrocking.
Eventually, Ratzinger replies to Cummins in a letter written in Latin dated Nov. 15, 1985.
While Ratzinger admits the “gravity” of Kiesle’s case, he states he is reluctant to take action immediately because he needs to consider the effect it will have on the “good of the Universal Church.”
Ratzinger informs Cummins that Kiesle’s case must be submitted to “careful consideration, which will take a longer period than usual.”
In response, Oakland Diocese Reverend George Mockel tells Cummins he believes the Vatican officials “are going to sit on” the case “until [Kiesle] gets quite a bit older.”
“My own feeling is that this is unfortunate,” Mockel writes.
Kiesle was eventually defrocked in 1987. He later worked as a youth coordinator at a parish in Pinole, northern California for eight months, said Anderson, who represented two of Kiesle’s victims in a civil action against the Oakland Diocese.
Anderson said the correspondence was evidence of a cover-up involving Ratzinger.
“It definitively puts Cardinal Ratzinger and the Vatican in the middle of a cover-up and the continued denial of it,” Anderson said.
Vatican spokesman Ciro Benedettini defended Ratzinger’s handling of the case in a statement to the Italian news agency Ansa on Friday.
“It is clearly understandable from the letter that cardinal Joseph Ratzinger did not cover-up the case but rather stated it was necessary to study it very carefully with consideration for all parties implicated,” Benedettini said.
Kiesle received only three years probation in his 1978 case before his record was later expunged. In 2004 he was sentenced to six years in prison for molesting a young girl nine years earlier.
Anderson said Kiesle had escaped a prison term in the earlier abuse case because of the influence of the Church.
“It’s very rare for a priest to even be prosecuted because of the influence the Church has,” he said. “So when Kiesle was prosecuted it was handled very quietly and under the radar.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of