AP Anti-Pope Distortions — First The New York Times , now Associated Press.
Once respected conveyors of information have now become archetypes of bigots.
The New York Times on March 25 accused Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, of intervening to prevent a priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, from facing penalties for cases of sexual abuse of minors. It was quickly shown to be false.
On April 9, AP put on the wires that the future Pope Benedict “resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children” in 1985.
Well, lo and behold, it seems those pleas were made by the pervert priest himself , Father Stephen Kiesle, who was seeking dispensation from his vow of celibacy. It seems Cardinal Ratzinger was not inclined to let him off the hook. You think AP might have thought that worthwhile to mention that tidbit?
Further, abuse cases at the time were the responsibility of the local diocese, in this case Oakland.
This means, IOW, that Cardinal Ratzinger had no authority to remove Kiesle from the ministry. That, however, doesn’t matter in this case because the Diocese of Oakland had already done so after he was after he was arrested in 1978 on misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct and received three years’ probation in a plea bargain. Kiesle, however, went on to do volunteer work which Oakland Bishop John Cummins kiboshed upon learning that he was doing so.
Kiesle was laicized two years after the controversial letter, on the eve of his 40th birthday which was in keeping with the then policy of not granting dispensations to priests under the age of 40.
Kiesle was convicted in 2004 of molesting a girl in 1995–note: this was eight years after his defrocking. He was sentenced to six years in prison. He lives today in California as a registered sex offender.
And has anyone ever wondered at why the same crowd that expresses so much outrage at Pope Benedict is equally outraged at the Boy Scouts policy of not allowing homosexual scout leaders?
AP Anti-Pope Distortions
