Yahoo – AFP,
Angus MacKinnon, 15 June 2015
 |
Pope
Francis has accepted the resignation of two US bishops (AFP Photo/
Filippo
Monteforte)
|
Vatican
City (AFP) - The Vatican on Monday announced the resignation of two senior US
clerics accused of failing to protect minors from a paedophile priest and set a
date for an unprecedented trial of a former archbishop for paying boys for sex.
The twin
announcements follow last week's unveiling of plans to create an internal
Church tribunal empowered to punish bishops who cover up abuse by priests.
The two US
bishops' resignations follow the 2012 jailing of Minnesota priest Curtis
Wehmeyer for the sexual abuse of two minors and possession of child
pornography.
 |
Prosecutors
in the case of Curtis
Wehmeyer unveiled evidence that Church officials failed to act on warnings that the priest was a danger to children (AFP Photo/Don Emmert) |
Wehmeyer's
conviction led to the archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis being charged
on June 5 with six counts of failing to protect minors after prosecutors
unveiled evidence that Church officials failed to act on repeated warnings that
the priest was a danger to children.
No
individuals have been charged but the two senior clerics who have stepped down,
Archbishop John Clayton Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Anthony Piche, were
both named in the complaint as having failed to heed the warnings.
Frank
Meuers, the Southern Minnesota leader of SNAP, a network of victims of clerical
abuse, said Nienstedt's resignation was "a tiny but belated step
forward."
"After
centuries of abuse and cover up done in secrecy, and decades of abuse and cover
up done somewhat in public, evidently one pope has finally seen fit to oust one
archbishop for complicity in clergy sex crimes. That's encouraging. But it's
only a very tiny drop of reform in an enormous bucket of horror," Meuers
said.
PR
campaign?
The Vatican
also announced Monday a start date of July 11 for the trial of Jozef
Wesolowski, a former papal ambassador to the Dominican Republic, in the first
case of its kind to be brought before a Vatican court.
Wesolowski,
a Polish former archbishop, was secretly recalled from his Caribbean posting in
2012 after the Church hierarchy was informed that he was regularly paying boys
for sexual services.
He was
defrocked by a church court in June 2014 but remained at liberty until
September 2014, when he was placed under house arrest under an order which the
Vatican described as coming directly from Francis.
Possession
of child pornography has been a crime under the Vatican city state's penal code
since 2013 following a change also initiated by the Argentinian Pope.
In a
statement, the Vatican said its prosecutor had worked in collaboration with
authorities in the Dominican Republic, who failed in their attempts to have
Wesolowski extradited to face trial there.
Dominican
authorities have said they have identified at least four alleged victims of the
papal envoy.
 |
Archbishop
John Clayton Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Anthony Piche have
resigned
after accusations they failed to protect minors (AFP Photo/Eric Cabanis)
|
Pope
Francis's supporters say the flurry of announcements related to sex abuse cases
reflect his determination to address an issue that has severely tarnished the
image of the Church in recent decades by creating new transparent procedures to
hold abusers to account.
Critics say
the initiatives undertaken since Francis was elected in 2013 do not go far
enough in ensuring priests who commit sex crimes against children are dealt
with under criminal law.
SNAP's
Barbara Dorris said she suspected the latest initiatives were part of a PR
campaign ahead of Francis's September visit to the United States.
"One
or two or three small steps doesn't erase decades of complicity," she
said.
Under the
reform announced last week, bishops who fail to respond appropriately to
allegations against priests in their dioceses will face judgement by a Church
tribunal.
The move
was welcomed by some survivors' groups as a significant step forward but others
said it would not lead to change as clerics would remain in charge of dealing
with other clerics.
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