Suit: Vatican #2 Man Got Letter From Abuse Victim

A 360 Degrees Perspective

A neatly typed letter dated March 5, 1995, is addressed to the No. 2 man at the Vatican and recounts the story of a priest who preyed on deaf boys trapped in dormitories with no chance of escape.

The letter to Cardinal Angelo Sodano from one of the Rev. Lawrence Murphy's alleged victims is more evidence for those trying to learn what Vatican officials knew about abuse claims at St. John's School for the Deaf outside Milwaukee and when.

The document was revealed Thursday in yet another lawsuit aimed at the highest reaches of the Roman Catholic Church. It's also significant because it involves Sodano, a strong defender of Pope Benedict XVI's handling of the global clergy sexual abuse crisis and a man whose own record on a separate high-profile case has come under scrutiny.

The Vatican's U.S.-based attorney, Jeffrey Lena, said in a statement Thursday that the lawsuit was a publicity stunt with no merit and it rehashes theories already rejected by U.S. courts.

Murphy, who died in 1998, is accused of sexually abusing some 200 boys at the deaf school from 1950 to 1974. He was put on a leave of absence when the allegations were revealed in the early 1970s. The lawsuit claims Murphy was still allowed to serve in ministry and work with children in another Wisconsin diocese into the early 1990s.

The Vatican has previously said that diocese officials and civil authorities knew about the allegations some 20 years before the Vatican was ever notified. Because of that, Lena said, it cannot be held liable for Murphy's abuse.

Murphy's case drew renewed attention after the recent release of documents called into question the actions of a Vatican office led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Before the disclosure of the 1995 letter to Sodano, it was believed the Vatican first learned of allegations against Murphy in a July 1996 letter from Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland. That letter was sent to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the powerful Vatican office Ratzinger led from 1981 to his election as pope in 2005.

That office told the archbishop to move forward with a canonical trial against Murphy in March 1997. But then the office later urged a different course after receiving a letter from Murphy.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, has said they suggested restricting Murphy from ministry rather than holding a full-blown canonical trial, citing Murphy's age, failing health, and a lack of further allegations.

The Wisconsin bishops ordered the proceedings halted, but in the end, Murphy died while still a defendant in a canonical trial, which could have led to Murphy being laicized, or stripped of the priesthood.

The defendants in the lawsuit are Ratzinger, Sodano, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and the Holy See, identified as the state of the Vatican City. Bertone was Ratzinger's deputy at the time and is now the Vatican's secretary of state.

The lawsuit claims all three men knew about the allegations against Murphy and conspired to keep them secret. The lawsuit says the claims are based on "information and belief" but doesn't offer proof.

Sodano has long been accused in news reports in U.S. Catholic publications and other outlets of stalling a Vatican probe of the Rev. Marcial Maciel, the discredited founder of the Legionaries of Christ. The order has admitted that the late Maciel fathered at least one child and molested young seminarians.

Anderson, the plaintiff's lawyer, provided a copy of a receipt showing the registered letter to Sodano had reached the Vatican. The man wrote Sodano -- then the Vatican's Secretary of State -- again and got no response, according to Anderson.

Lena said that at the time, it was a local matter regarding a local priest and the victim had already communicated with the local bishop. Under those circumstances, Lena said it is "entirely appropriate" under canon law for the local diocese - not the Holy See - to respond.

Thursday's lawsuit is not the first to aim directly at the Vatican, even from Anderson. Another lawsuit of his remains open in Oregon and was recently allowed to move forward by a federal appeals court. In a separate Kentucky lawsuit, Vatican attorneys are mounting a defense they hope will shield the pope from having to answer attorneys' questions under oath.

Some legal experts questioned the Wisconsin lawsuit's prospects.

Nicholas Cafardi, a canon lawyer and former dean at the Duquesne University School of Law, said he doesn't believe Anderson can overcome sovereign immunity hurdles. He said the lawsuit describes the Roman Catholic Church as if it were an international commercial business and it's not.

"He's alleging an employment relationship between individual priests and the Holy See," Cafardi said. "I'm sorry, but diocesan priests in the United States are not employees of the Holy See ... If a court were to accept that, they would be creating a new Catholic Church, not the one that exists now."

But Washington, D.C., attorney Jonathan Levy, a specialist in international law who has tried suing the Vatican Bank over Holocaust claims, said Anderson could succeed in taking advantage of exceptions to sovereign immunity.

"I'd say he's got some new and exciting theories in there why the Vatican should be held responsible for its bad acts," Levy said.

AP; Reuters; UPI; writers Nicole Winfield in Vatican City, Patrick Condon in St. Paul, Minn., and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

Priest Calls For Pope To Resign

A Massachusetts priest has called for the pope to resign, WCVB-TV in Boston reported.

It is not the first time the Rev. James Scahill has criticized the pope or the church hierarchy. But this time, he minced no words and left nothing to anyone's imagination.

"The pope should step down if he's not prepared to embrace the truth relative to this matter," said Scahill. "I would think he is not being truthful."

In his eight years at St. Michael's Church, Scahill has withheld money from the Diocese until Richard Lavigne was defrocked, and he has accused church leaders of ineptitude.

"By placing these weak men in further temptation, they're frankly were as culpable of the victimization as the victimizer," he said.

Some say Scahill has been disobedient.

"The church will not have myopic obedience from me like the myopic obedience of the soldiers of Hitler," he said. "There is nothing more pro-life than the better protection of children from exploitation of any kind from anyone, and yet this church has remained patently silent about this."

His sermon on Sunday was neither surprising nor out of character.

"They couldn't help but rise to their feet and applaud him for his bravery," Sister Betty Broughan said.

"We had 1,700 families. We're up to 2,300 in just eight years, when other churches are closing," said Patti Baran, of St. Michael's.

"Of course I'm afraid. My stomach has been jumping off and on for eight years. Of course I'm afraid. But when a person comes to the point of not being afraid to die, how can you then possibly fear what anyone or any institution will do to you?" Scahill said.

Springfield Bishop McDonnell released a statement saying there was "sad irony that Father Scahill's remarks were delivered on Divine Mercy Sunday -- a day reaffirming forgiveness."

He also compared Scahill to Doubting Thomas in the Gospel.

WCVB-TV, Boston; Boston Globe.

Future Pope Stalled Pedophile Case

A 360 Degrees Perspective

The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.

The correspondence is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office.

The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, who pleaded no contest to misdemeanors involving child molestation in 1978.

The Vatican confirmed Friday that it was Ratzinger's signature and said it was a typical form letter used in laicization cases. Attorney Jeffrey Lena said the matter proceeded "expeditiously, not by modern standards, but by those standards at the time," and that the bishop was to guard against further abuse.

Another spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said the letter showed no attempt at a cover-up. "The then-Cardinal Ratzinger didn't cover up the case, but as the letter clearly shows, made clear the need to study the case with more attention, taking into account the good of all involved."

The diocese recommended removing Kiesle (KEEZ'-lee) from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests.

The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed; during that time he continued to do volunteer work with children through the church.

In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle were of "grave significance" but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. He also urged the bishop to provide Kiesle with "as much paternal care as possible" while awaiting the decision, according to a translation by Professor Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

Lena, the Vatican attorney, said "paternal care" was a way of telling the bishop he was responsible for keeping Kiesle out of trouble. Lena said Kiesle was not accused of any child abuse in the 5½ years it took for the Vatican to act on the laicization.

The future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.

Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory.

Cummins, his bishop, told the Vatican that the priest took a leave of absence and met with a therapist and his probation officer during the three years. It's not clear from the file where Kiesle lived during those years, but Cummins mentions temporary assignments in neighboring dioceses that never worked out.

As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him.

In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers.

"It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982.

While papers include only one letter with Ratzinger's signature, correspondence and internal memos from the diocese refer to a letter dated Nov. 17, 1981, from the then-cardinal to the bishop. Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a week later.

California church officials wrote to Ratzinger at least three times to check on the status of Kiesle's case and Cummins discussed the case with officials during a Vatican visit, according to correspondence. At one point, a Vatican official wrote to say the file may have been lost and suggested resubmitting materials.

Diocese officials considered writing Ratzinger again after they received his 1985 response to impress upon him that leaving Kiesle in the ministry would harm the church, Rev. George Mockel wrote in a memo to the Oakland bishop.

"My own reading of this letter is that basically they are going to sit on it until Steve gets quite a bit older," the memo said. "Despite his young age, the particular and unique circumstances of this case would seem to make it a greater scandal if he were not laicized."

As Kiesle's fate was being weighed in Rome, the priest returned to suburban Pinole to volunteer as a youth minister at St. Joseph Church, where he had been associate pastor from 1972-75.

Kiesle was ultimately laicized on Feb. 13, 1987, though the documents do not indicate how or why. They also don't say what role - if any - Ratzinger had in the decision.

Kiesle continued to volunteer with children, according to Maurine Behrend, who worked in the Oakland diocese's youth ministry office in the 1980s. After learning of his history, Behrend complained to church officials. When nothing was done she wrote a letter.

"Obviously nothing has been done after EIGHT months of repeated notifications," she wrote. "How are we supposed to have confidence in the system when nothing is done? A simple phone call to the pastor from the bishop is all it would take."

She eventually confronted Cummins at a confirmation and Kiesle was gone a short time later, Behrend said.

Kiesle, who married after leaving the priesthood, was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations.

He pleaded no contest in 2004 to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison.

Kiesle, now 63 and a registered sex offender, lives in a Walnut Creek gated community, according to his address listed on the Megan's Law sex registry.

More than a half-dozen victims reached a settlement in 2005 with the Oakland diocese alleging Kiesle had molested them as young children.

"He admitted molesting many children and bragged that he was the Pied Piper and said he tried to molest every child that sat on his lap," said Lewis VanBlois, an attorney for six Kiesle victims who interviewed the former priest in prison. "When asked how many children he had molested over the years, he said 'tons.'"

Cummins, 82 and now retired, initially stated he did not recall writing to Ratzinger about Kiesle, but he remembered when shown the letter with his signature on Friday. He said things had changed over the past quarter-century.

"When he (Ratzinger) took over I think he was following what was the practice of the time, that Pope John Paul was slowing these things down. You didn't just walk out of the priesthood then," Cummins said.

"These things were slow and their idea of thoroughness was a little more than ours. We were in a situation that was hands-on, with personal reaction."

Documents obtained by the Associated Press and other news organizations last week revealed similar instances of Vatican stalling in cases involving two Arizona clergy.

In one case, the future pope took over the abuse case of the Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.

In the second, the bishop called Msgr. Robert Trupia a "major risk factor" in a letter to Ratzinger. There is no indication in those files that Ratzinger responded.

The Vatican has called the accusations "absolutely groundless" and said the facts were being misrepresented.

Reuters; AP; Sky News; Reporters Brooke Donald in Oakland, Eric Gorski in Denver, John Mone in San Diego, Raquel Maria Dillon in Los Angeles and Victor L. Simpson in Rome contributed to this report.

Vatican Will Outline Abuse Policy With Online Guide

A 360 Degrees Analysis

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the office once known more chillingly as the Inquisition - has long epitomized the secrecy and mystery of the Vatican, with responsibility for banning books and meting out punishments as severe as excommunication and burning at the stake.

Now, as the office's handling of child-molesting priests comes increasingly under fire, the Vatican is starting to open up. On Monday, it will post on its Web site a concise guide for the layman on how the Congregation handles sex abuse allegations.

Also Friday, the Vatican said that Pope Benedict XVI would meet with more abuse victims and that transparency in dealing with abuse allegations is an "urgent requirement" for the church -- a sharp turnabout in Rome's previously defensive response to the scandal.

The laymen's guide doesn't contain any information that isn't available to the public through a trip to a specialized religious library or a Vatican bookstore.

But it puts various sources of complicated canonical procedures together in a concise, easy-to-read, one-page guide, without cumbersome canon law citations and Latin phrases.

The church's internal justice system for dealing with abuse allegations has come under attack because of claims by victims that their accusations were long ignored by bishops more concerned about protecting the church and by the Congregation, which was headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1981 until he was elected pope in 2005.

Jose Barba Martin of Mexico tried for years to have his accusations against the founder of the Legionaries of Christ heard by the Congregation. In the end, it took eight years for Rome to discipline the Rev. Marcial Maciel.

"They went through the motions of the law, but they didn't treat us with respect for the law," Barba said from Mexico City.

In the end Barba's abuser was sentenced in 2006 to live a life of reserved prayer; Maciel died in 2008 before the Legionaries admitted that he had fathered at least one child and molested young seminarians.

According to Vatican norms, issued in 2001 and summarized in the new guide, a bishop must investigate every allegation of sexual abuse of a minor by a cleric. If the accusation has a semblance of truth, the case is referred to the Congregation, which decides how to proceed.

The Congregation's disciplinary department, which weighs each case, is composed of 10 people: Monsignor Charles Scicluna, who is the promoter of justice, or chief prosecutor; the bureau chief; seven priests; and a lay lawyer, though other officials from other Vatican offices are brought in for specific cases.

They can decide to authorize the diocese to pursue either a judicial or an administrative trial, both of which can condemn a priest to a number of penalties, including defrocking, or what the church calls being reduced to the lay state. Victims can also seek damages. Or the Congregation can conduct a trial on its own, although that is rare.

If the evidence is overwhelming, the Congregation can refer the case directly to the pope, who can issue a decree dismissing the priest from the priesthood altogether.

Scicluna has said that since 2001, some 3,000 cases concerning accusations of abuse dating back 50 years have been referred to the Congregation. A full canonical trial has taken place in 20 percent of the cases; 60 percent of the time there has been no trial, primarily because the priest was old and was instead disciplined by other means, such as restricting where he could celebrate Mass and sending him to pray.

In 10 percent of the cases, the pope has dismissed the priest from the priesthood; in the remaining 10 percent of the cases, the priest himself has asked to be laicized.

The norms themselves are full of fascinating details particular to the church: Judges who mete out justice must be priests "of mature age," must hold doctorates in canon law, and must be "outstanding in good morals."

If the Congregation authorizes the diocese to conduct a canonical trial, three to five judges sit in judgment.

The trial is conducted according to the continental system, in which judges weigh the evidence but do the investigating too, as opposed to the American justice system, an adversarial process where facts are evaluated by a jury of peers.

The confidentiality provisions in canonical proceedings are offensive to some in the U.S. But their purpose is to ensure the integrity of the proceedings and not to hide information from civil authorities, said Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's U.S. attorney.

"The problem is that people from one legal culture misinterpret how another legal culture operates," he said. "These misunderstandings unfortunately infect much of the debate raging over the meaning of canonical provisions."

The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who has been the main expert witness for victims in hundreds of lawsuits against priests and diocese in the U.S. and elsewhere, said canonical trials can be an effective way to mete out justice - if they are held.

The problem is that they have rarely been held, said Doyle, who in the course of testifying in lawsuits has reviewed documentation from 190 of the 195 Catholic dioceses in the United States and reviewed more than 1,500 priest personnel files.

"Almost all the cases - where bishops received allegations that a priest sexually abused, raped or molested a child - the bishops' procedure was simply to confront the priest, transfer him to another assignment, and in a few cases they send them to counseling centers," Doyle said.

Doyle said the secrecy surrounding the proceedings is excessive in requiring the victims to take an oath of secrecy once the trial begins.

"The justification for secrecy is usually given to protect the reputations of everyone involved -- which is legitimate - and the need to conduct the trial as unencumbered by outside influences," Doyle said. "But the common law system is evidence you can have some transparency."

The Congregation traces its origins to the Congregation for the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, the commission created in 1542 that functioned as a tribunal to root out heresy, punish crimes against the faith and name Inquisitors for the church.

One of its more famous victims was Giordano Bruno, burned in Rome in 1600 after being tried for heresy.

The Congregation today is housed in a grand palazzo on St. Peter's Square, where two Swiss Guards stand at attention. The Vatican declined to let the news organizations inside for this article.

The Rev. Davide Cito, a canon lawyer at Rome's Pontifical Holy Cross University, has participated in cases before the Congregation's tribunal and been awed by both the history of the institution and tragedy of the crimes that are decided there.

"The first thing anyone who deals with these cases feels is respect - respect for the victim and respect for the priest," he said.

The Vatican; Pontifical Holy Cross University; AP; Reuters.

Exploring A Link Between Catholic Celibacy And Child Sex Abuse

A 360 Degrees Perspective

With the Roman Catholic Church facing a series of paedophilia scandals, some observers have begun to ask whether the tradition of celibacy in the priesthood has contributed to child abuse.

In Pope Benedict XVI's home country, Germany, the Catholic Church could have hoped for a better Easter in terms of public relations.

While the media deal, nearly daily, with fresh allegations of priests sexually abusing children, opinion polls published by Stern magazine suggest almost a fifth of German Catholics have considered leaving the Church because of the abuse scandal and only 17% of Germans now trust the Church as an institution.

Typical of the kind of comment Catholic leaders would have preferred not to have faced,was a contribution to a recent ZDF television discussion program by Professor Klaus Beier, head of the Institute of Sexology and Sexual Medicine at Berlin's Charite Hospital.

"If you are already struggling with a conflicted sexuality, including paedophile tendencies, then it is attractive to become part of an institution that obliges you to be celibate," he said.

"I have seen many of these cases... and it is something the Catholic Church should be made aware of."

'Abnormal Sexuality'

More surprising has been the contribution to the debate of senior figures from inside the Church, including Hamburg Auxiliary Bishop Hans-Jochen Jaschke, who seemed to add fuel to the fire of those making a connection between priestly celibacy and paedophilia.

"The offenders always say 'we are not the guilty ones;

society is guilty, the church is guilty, celibacy is the problem,

not us'"

- Manfred Luetz, Psychiatrist

He was quoted as saying that the "celibate lifestyle can attract people who have an abnormal sexuality and cannot integrate sexuality into their lives."

But even those outspoken Catholic rebels who have long called for a discussion about the future of celibacy - including Father Hans Kung, a contemporary of the Pope and well-known thorn in the side of the Vatican - have distanced themselves from any attempt to link paedophile offenses and priestly vows of chastity.

Now another theologian, Manfred Luetz, psychiatrist, author and organizer of a 2003 Vatican congress about the abuse of children, has been defending the Church's stance, resisting any link between celibacy and paedophilia.

"I do not think that the Vatican is trying to prevent any debate about celibacy," he said, speaking in his office at Cologne's Alexianer Hospital, where he is director.

"Catholics are free to talk about it. Celibacy is no dogma. But I think when we have a discussion about abuse, then this is not the moment to discuss celibacy, because then we make the same strategies as the offenders do.

"The offenders always say 'we are not the guilty ones; society is guilty, the church is guilty, celibacy is the problem, not us'. And I do not want to be an accomplice to such escape strategies".

Modernization

Dr Luetz dismisses any suggestion of a scientific correlation between celibacy and abuse.

"The father of a family", he says, "is 36 times more likely to abuse than a celibate priest. So it is not good to discuss celibacy in this context.

"Instead, we have to discuss how to prevent other abuses, we have to speak about the victims and we have to speak about the way we approach these topics with transparency."

Dr Luetz says the Church has already been doing this for six years, noting that guidelines are now in place and praising a campaign in Germany for victims to come forward.

But he also notes that most of the cases now emerging date back to long before these measures were put in place.

"I know many think that reforming celibacy rules would be a modernization, but what is modernizing?" he asks.

"The Protestant Church doesn't have celibacy and the number of people leaving their clergy is higher than ours."

Worldly Experience

Many German Catholics visiting Cologne's famous cathedral during Easter week do appear, however, to fix on priestly celibacy as one of the issues contributing to the church's current problems.

One woman in her 20s suggested marriage for priests would be a healthy step forward for the institution.

Former Jesuit priest says he left the priesthood because of celibacy rules

"If it would be allowed I think there wouldn't be so many problems and so many secrets that they have to keep," she said.

Another church-goer said she thought more worldly experience had to be a good thing among priests.

"The family and children - they should experience what they are talking about," she said.

A man visiting the cathedral with his wife and daughters agreed.

"It should be possible for priests to marry," he said.

"It would be a good face for the church, so people can see they make a first step to be more modern and to be actual."

Damian Sassin, who served as a Jesuit priest for 20 years before leaving the priesthood and getting married, is also among those who supports reform.

"The celibacy rule is a part of the current crisis of the Church. It's definitely not the only one but it plays a role in it," he said.

"It took me a while for me to... finally admit that I just couldn't live this [way] happily and healthily, knowing quite a few priests who obviously couldn't do that either, but kept doing it, and became more and more strange people."

Accused Priest Working In India

A 360 Degrees Perspective

A Roman Catholic priest was in his native India in 2007 when he was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl at his former post in Minnesota. Three years later, he is still serving as a priest in India with the blessing of his local bishop.

And the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul has no intention of returning to the U.S. to answer the charges.

His bishop said Jeyapaul handles paperwork for schools in the diocese office and does not work with children.

"We cannot simply throw out the priest, so he is just staying in the bishop's house, and he is helping me with the appointment of teachers," said the Most Rev. A. Almaraj of the Diocese of Ootacamund in southern India. "He says he is innocent, and these are only allegations. ... I don't know what else to do."

The Vatican weighed in Monday, saying that officials there thought Jeyapaul should be removed from the priesthood and that they cooperated with efforts to extradite him to the U.S. -- even providing authorities with his exact location in India.

But they said the bishop in India refused to remove him and instead sentenced the priest to a year in a monastery after holding his own church trial.

Critics of the Catholic Church have seized on the case as another example of what they said is a practice of protecting child-molesting priests from the law.

Jeyapaul was one of many foreign priests brought to help fill shortages in U.S. parishes. Last year, about one-quarter of the newly ordained priests in the United States were foreign-born, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

Jeyapaul, 55, came to Minnesota in 2004 and was assigned to work at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Greenbush, a town of fewer than 1,000 people just south of the Canadian border. In 2005, he went to India to visit his ailing mother.

While he was there, Bishop Victor Balke of the Diocese of Crookston, Minn., said he received an anonymous letter accusing Jeyapaul of an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old girl. Balke investigated and e-mailed Jeyapaul with the allegations.

"You are no longer welcome here, and I will go to the police if you return," Balke wrote.

Jeyapaul wrote back to say he had been falsely accused but would stay in India.

Balke also notified the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the top office in the Vatican that was formerly headed by Pope Benedict XVI and handles all abuse cases involving priests.

"For my part, I cannot in good conscience allow this matter to be passed over because the cleric has left my territory," Balke wrote to Cardinal William Levada, then head of the office, in late 2005. "In my mind it would be a shameful betrayal towards the women and girls in India to whom Fr. Jeyapaul could at present pose a serious risk."

In a May 2006 letter, a Vatican official said Jeyapaul's bishop in India had been instructed to monitor him "so that he does not constitute a risk to minors and does not create scandal."

No charges were ever filed in connection with the 16-year-old. But in November 2006, Balke wrote another letter to the Vatican, warning that Minnesota prosecutors were pursuing charges against Jeyapaul in connection with another girl -- this one, 14 -- and hoped to extradite him.

Charges involving the 14-year-old were brought in January 2007. Prosecutors said she accused Jeyapaul of threatening to kill her family if she did not come into the rectory, where he then forced her to perform oral sex on him and groped her.

"It is a false accusation against me," Jeyapaul told The Associated Press. "I do not know that girl at all."

Lisa Hanson, the prosecutor in northern Minnesota's Roseau County, said her office has been working with the U.S. Justice Department to extradite Jeyapaul. She would not say when prosecutors began pressing for his return.

"He's charged with serious felonies here in this country," Hanson said. "We want justice for the victim here and we want to do whatever we can to protect potential future victims everywhere."

Officials at India's Foreign Ministry were not immediately available to discuss whether the U.S. asked for Jeyapaul's extradition.

The Vatican's U.S. attorney, Jeffrey Lena, said in a statement Monday that the church believed that the accusations against Jeyapaul "were serious enough to merit dismissal from the clerical state." But under canon law, Lena said, the Vatican leaves that decision to the local bishop.

Almaraj said the Vatican had never discussed asking Jeyapaul to return to the United States to appear in court. "No steps were taken. Nobody talked about that. Nobody asked about that," the bishop said.

An attorney for the alleged victim in the Minnesota case, Jeff Anderson, demanded on Monday that Jeyapaul be suspended and returned to the U.S. to face justice.

"Everyone knew there was a serious problem, but they chose not to ask and they chose not to tell," Anderson said.

The Vatican has denounced such accusations and has blamed the media for what it calls a smear campaign against the pope and his advisers.

Reuters; AP; Sky News; BBC; UPI; Washington Post.

Old Letter: Former Pope Knew Of Abuse

The head of a Roman Catholic order that specialized in the treatment of pedophile priests visited with the then-pope nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending the removal of pedophile priests from ministry, according to a copy of the letter released Wednesday.

In the Aug. 27, 1963 letter, the head of the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete (Holy Spirit) tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry and strongly urges defrocking repeat offenders.

The letter, written by the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald, appears to have been drafted at the request of the pope and summarizes Fitzgerald's thoughts on problem priests after his Vatican visit.

A message left with the Paraclete order at one of their two existing facilities in Missouri was not returned. A number for the second facility was disconnected. The offices of the Vatican spokesman were closed late Wednesday.

Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, defended the church and said it was unlikely Paul VI ever saw the letter.

"The fact of the matter is, the prevailing ideas at the time about how to deal with abusive behavior were not adequate," Tamberg said. "Clearly, society and the church have evolved new understandings of what causes sexually abusive behavior and how to deal with it."

Fitzgerald opens the five-page letter by thanking the pope for an audience the day before and says he is summarizing his thoughts at the pope's request on the "problem of the problem priest" after 20 years working to treat them.

He tells Paul VI that treatment for priests who have succumbed to "abnormal, homosexual tendencies" should include psychiatric, as well as spiritual, counseling -- but goes on to warn about the dangers of leaving those individuals in ministry.

The letter also touches on priests who have consensual affairs with women.

"Personally, I am not sanguine of the return of priests to active duty who have been addicted to abnormal practices, especially sins with the young," Fitzgerald wrote.

"Where there is indication of incorrigibility, because of the tremendous scandal given, I would most earnestly recommend total laicization," he wrote. "I say 'total' ... because when these men are taken before civil authority, the non-Catholic world definitely blames the discipline of celibacy for the perversion of these men."

The letter proves that Vatican officials knew about clergy abuse decades ago and should have done more to protect children, said Tony DeMarco, an attorney for clergy abuse victims in Los Angeles.

The church has come under fire for transferring priests accused of sexual abuse to other parishes, rather than reporting the abuse to civil authorities and removing them from ministry.

Fitzgerald's letter shows the pope knew how pervasive and destructive the problem was, DeMarco said.

"He says the solution is to take them out of the priesthood period, not shuffle them around, not pass them from diocese to diocese."

The letter was released in Los Angeles by attorneys who represented more than 500 victims of clergy abuse in their record-breaking $660 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2007.

It's among thousands of pages of clergy abuse documents that are to be released as a condition of the settlement after review and approval by a judge overseeing the process.

The letter released Wednesday is different from a 1957 letter made public last year in which Fitzgerald seeks help from the Bishop of Manchester, N.H. in finding a placement for a priest leaving the treatment program.

Attorneys also released a 250-page, redacted transcript of the 2007 deposition of the Rev. Joseph McNamara, who took over the Paraclete after Fitzgerald.

Reuters; AP; LA Times; Washington Post.