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	Victim of Kiesle Among Protestors at Oakland Diocese Ktvu April 12, 2010 http://www.ktvu.com/news/23119441/detail.html [with video] In reaction to reports of the pope's involvement in a sex abuse scandal, local activists demonstrated in front of the Cathedral of Christ the Light in downtown Oakland Sunday and demanded structural change in the Catholic Church. Only about a dozen protesters turned out in the rain, including a former priest, and a victim of Stephen Kiesle, the former Oakland priest at the center of the controversy. "The Catholic church needs to stop living with blinders on. And the Pope needs to step down. In my opinion, he was the accomplice to crimes," said Melinda Costello, a victim of Kiesle. Costello said she was just seven years old when Kiesle, a seminarian at the time, began abusing her. "He loved children and he always wanted children to sit on his lap," said Costello. Costello said Kiesle molested her for three years, in the late 1960s and early '70s. He was ordained in 1972 and wasn't defrocked for another 15 years, even though he was accused of molesting others, and admitted to tying up and molesting two boys. "I am absolutely appalled to know that Ratzinger knew about Kiesle and did nothing about it for four or five years. He's more concerned about the face of the church than children of the church," said Costello about then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, who delayed Kiesle's defrocking, according to letters recently made public. Costello and other members of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by a Priest) called for the pope to step down Sunday. "If Joseph Ratzinger signed a letter saying, 'Delay the case, delay the case, delay the case,' then Ratzinger's the guy who's in charge of this crisis. He's the guy who should have focused on it," said SNAP member Dan McNevin. Berkeley attorney Jeffrey Lena, who represents the Vatican, said rules set in place by Pope John Paul the Second mandated delays in allowing young priests to return to civilian life. A spokesman for the diocese of Oakland, Mike Brown, also declined an on-camera interview Sunday but made this statement: "In 1978, the Diocese of Oakland removed Stephen Kiesle from his duties as a priest in the Diocese. He was not allowed to function as a priest in any manner from that time forward and he was subsequently laicized in 1987." But in 1985, Kiesle volunteered as a youth minister at a church in Pinole. Later Sunday afternoon, the Oakland Diocese ordered demonstrators off the cathedral property. But former priest Tim Steir vows to return to protest here every Sunday. "The time for apologies is past; the time for structural reform is now," said Steir. Brown also said that in the mid-1990's the Diocese of Oakland became one of the first dioceses in the country to actively minister to the victims of clergy sexual abuse. That ministry is called "No More Secrets" and it continues to this day.
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