UNITED STATES
San Francisco Faith
FATHER BENEDICT VAN DER PUTTEN, a priest formerly of the Society of St. Pius X, has been relieved of his faculties by Pope Benedict XVI, according to an announcement issued by the chancellor of the diocese of Marquette in August. Van der Putten, who, beginning in 1995, had been retreat master at the society's St. Aloysius Retreat House in Los Gatos, left the Society of St. Pius X in 2000 to seek reconciliation with Rome. In December 2003, the bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Van der Putten had gone to seek regularization, announced that he had refused incardination to Van der Putten "because of the seriousness of his admitted sexual misconduct." According to the diocese of Marquette, Van der Putten, "at one time a holder of a celebret from the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, has been dismissed from the clerical state by decree of His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI after being accused of sexual abuse of minors." Van der Putten reportedly is currently living in Hawaii.