Back in 2011, Robert Finn, the Roman Catholic bishop of Kansas City, was charged with failing to tell Kansas City police that one of his priests had taken pornographic pictures of young girls. He was convicted in 2012 and sentenced to two years’ probation–to date, the only time an American bishop has been convicted on criminal charges related to the ongoing scandal of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Now, the Vatican has opened an investigation into Finn’s tenure as the spiritual leader of northwestern Missouri’s Catholics.
According to the National Catholic Reporter, Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa, Ontario flew to Kansas City on the week of September 19-25 in what looks to be the start of a detailed probe into the manner in which the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph has been run since Finn took the reins in 2005. Such an investigation, known as an “apostolic visitation,” occurs when one of the highest departments of the church or the pope himself have concerns about a diocese. Prendergast and the Vatican aren’t giving any details, since the visit is technically private. Finn confirmed through a diocese spokesman that he was notified of the process by the American papal nuncio–the equivalent of an ambassador in other countries–but isn’t saying much else. However, according to several people familiar with the inquiry, Prendergast was sent to Kansas City by the Congregation for Bishops, which advises Pope Francis on the appointment of bishops. He is tasked with recommending whether Finn should keep his post.
Finn has been under fire since 2011 due to the manner in which he coddled Father Shawn Ratigan, then pastor of St. Patrick Parish in northern Kansas City. Finn reportedly received reports about Ratigan’s behavior around kids as early as 2006. However, according to a timeline of the Ratigan scandal from The Wichita Eagle, the first detailed complaint came in May 2010, in the form of a letter from Julie Hess, the principal of St. Patrick Catholic School. Read it here. In hindsight, this letter makes for horrifying reading. Hess said that several parents and teachers had reported seeing Ratigan allow girls to sit on his lap, swing a girl over his head while wearing her uniform skirt, toss a girl wearing a two-piece swimsuit over his head, and let kids rummage through his pockets for candy. Additionally, several parents accompanying a Brownie troop to Ratigan’s house said that they found a girl’s panties in a planter.
Fast forward to December 16, 2010. That day, according to a probable cause statement from the Kansas City Police Department, a computer repair person discovered several extremely graphic pictures on Ratigan’s laptop. Among them were multiple images of girls focused on their private parts. a diocese IT specialist took Ratigan’s laptop to his boss, diocese IT director Julie Creech. The day before, he’d seen some extremely graphic pictures on the laptop and felt he had to show them to Creech. They included several upskirt pictures and images focused on girls’ crotches. Within moments of looking at the pictures, Creech told the diocese’s second-in-command, Vicar General Robert Murphy, that the police had to be notified immediately. Somehow Ratigan got wind of this, because rather than go to Mass that morning, he tried to commit suicide by running his motorcycle inside a closed garage.
What did Finn do then? After what appeared to be a cursory investigation of Hess’ claims, he sent Ratigan to live in a convent and stay away from children. But early in 2011, it looks like Finn eased those restrictions considerably. He allowed Ratigan to attend children’s parties, host an Easter egg hunt and preside over a girl’s First Communion. During that time, he continued to take pictures of another girl. When Murphy saw those pictures in May 2011, he alerted police. During that time, the kids at St. Patrick were told Ratigan was recovering from carbon monoxide poisoning. The first they heard that anything was wrong was when his arrest flashed across local media. Later, investigators found several pornographic pictures dating back as far as 2004. Faced with overwhelming evidence, Ratigan pleaded guilty to five federal charges of possessing child porn and was sentenced to 50 years in prison–at his age, effectively a life sentence.
Finn has since claimed that while he received a brief verbal summary of Hess’ letter from Murphy, he didn’t read the full letter until Ratigan’s arrest. But he should have made it his business to know, especially given that in 2008, he signed a settlement with 47 victims of sexual abuse in which he agreed to report suspected abuse to the police. A grand jury agreed–hence the 2011 indictment and conviction. While the case was underway, Finn admitted that he had initially not taken Hess’ complaint seriously. And just this summer, an arbitrator ruled that Finn’s coddling of Ratigan breached the 2008 agreement, and ordered the diocese to pay $1.1 million to the victims.
According to several people whom Prendergrast interviewed, his questions were focused mainly on whether Finn was qualified to be a leader. While many of the answers were focused on the broader issue of his management of the diocese, based on his coddling of Ratigan alone, the answer to that question is a resounding no. Pope Francis stated in May that he intended to change the way the church dealt with sexual abuse, and three bishops were being investigated. Since then, a bishop from Paraguay has been defrocked, and a bishop from Poland was defrocked and put under criminal investigation. Hopefully Finn is the third bishop in the hot seat. His ouster is long overdue.
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Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC at Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.