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	Vatican Responds to Files Indicating Future Pope Resisted Defrocking California Priest By Sharon Ito James Scullary C. Johnson News 10 April 9, 2010 http://www.news10.net/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=79073&catid=2 LOS ANGELES, CA -- Church files show that before becoming pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger resisted defrocking a California priest who molested children. A 1985 letter signed by Ratzinger cited concerns about the effect that removing the priest, Rev. Stephen Kiesle, would have on "the good of the universal church." The correspondence was obtained exclusively by The Associated Press. It is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, played no role in blocking removal of pedophile priests while head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office. The letter is part of years of correspondence between the diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of Kiesle. The Vatican confirmed Ratzinger's signature on the letter but declined comment on its contents. Kiesle, 63, served as a Bay Area priest in the 1970s. In 1978 he pleaded no contest to lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two boys. He was sentenced to three years in the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, California, and his record was later expunged. When authorities later learned of his past, they realized he lived just a block away from Amber Swartz-Garcia, a 7-year old girl who disappeared from her front yard in Pinole in 1988. That led investigators to take a harder look at whether Kiesle had anything to do with Swartz-Garcia's disappearance. In 2002, officials used back hoes, cadaver dogs and ground penetrating radar to search his Truckee vacation home. However, nothing significant was found. Kiesle eventually pleaded no contest in 2004 to molesting a young girl at a Truckee golf course near his home. He was sentenced to six years behind bars, which he served at San Quentin Prison. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Kiesle was paroled in March 2009. He is on active parole and his daily movements are monitored by passive GPS (his movements are recorded and downloaded at night to be reviewed). Kiesle is currently living in the Rossmoor community in Walnut Creek and registered as a sex offender on the Megan's Law database. Vatican responds The Vatican's lawyer says then-Cardinal Ratzinger told a California bishop to make sure a priest with a history of sexually molesting children didn't abuse while the church worked to defrock him. Attorney Jeffrey Lena was responding to a 1985 letter obtained by The Associated Press on Friday in which the future pope said more time was needed to study the case of the Kiesle. Lena said Ratzinger urged the bishop to give Kiesle "as much paternal care as possible." Lena said that was a way of saying the bishop was responsible for ensuring Kiesle didn't reoffend. Lena said there were no known cases of abuse by Kiesle between 1981, when his diocese first recommended he be laicized, and 1987 when he was removed from the priesthood.
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