The Dallas Morning News
10:31 PM CST on Tuesday, March 15, 2005
By BRENDAN M. CASE, BROOKS EGERTON and REESE DUNKLIN / The Dallas Morning News
U.S. Catholic leaders say they've been doing everything possible to protect children since adopting a "one-strike-and-you're-out-of-ministry" abuse policy in 2002. Yet some are helping their fallen priests start over abroad. And some aren't asking the Vatican to defrock these men – the only thing that would prevent foreign bishops from employing them.
The U.S. church's sex-abuse reforms prevented the Rev. Manuel Fernández from keeping his high-profile job at the cathedral in Trenton, N.J., and running the diocese's ethnic ministries program. But they didn't stop him from relocating to his native Spain and leading a parish.
He remains a member of the Trenton Diocese. Officials there won't discuss his continued ministry or whether they told the Spanish church about allegations he had inappropriately touched a teenage girl decades ago. Those complaints had led to his 2002 removal.