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	Vatican's Pedophile Scandal Hits Close to Home By Maureen O'Rourke Rossmoor News April 17, 2010 http://www.rossmoornews.com/articles/2010/04/15/news/community_news/12vaticans%20pedophile.txt Several Bay Area news organizations tried to obtain entrance into Rossmoor last Friday when news broke that the pope resisted defrocking a California priest who molested children. That defrocked priest, Stephen Kiesle, is now living in Rossmoor as a co-occupant and the news organizations wanted to interview him. The news organizations were denied access to Rossmoor by Securitas, but sat outside the gate for several hours as they gave remote reports to their stations. Associated Press obtained church files that show Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, resisted defrocking Kiesle for several years in the 1980s. Associated Press exclusively obtained a 1985 letter signed by Ratzinger citing concerns about the effect that removing Kiesle would have on "the good of the universal church." The correspondence challenges the Vatican's insistence that Ratzinger played no role in blocking removal of pedophile priests while head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office. Kiesle, who is registered as a sex offender on the Megan's Law database, was sentenced in 2004 to six years in San Quentin Prison for the 1995 molestation of a young girl in Truckee. 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). Timeline of Kiesle's life Ordained in 1972 in the Oakland diocese, Kiesle was an associate pastor at St. Joseph's Church in Pinole from 1972 through 1975. He was assigned to Our Lady of the Rosary in Union City from 1975 through 1978. In August 1978, he was arrested and pleaded no contest to lewd conduct, a misdemeanor, for tying up and molesting two boys. He was sentenced to three years of probation and his record was later expunged. In 1981, Bishop John Cummins sent Kiesle's file to the Vatican in support of the priest's petition for laicization. The Vatican wanted more information, so in February 1982, Cummins sent Ratzinger additional information and warned of a possible scandal if Kiesle was not defrocked. However, in 1985, before the Vatican made any decisions on Kiesle, he volunteered as a youth minister at St. Joseph's Church in Pinole. Correspondence went back and forth between Cummins and the Vatican through 1985, and it wasn't until 1987 that Kiesle was defrocked. In 2002, Kiesle was arrested and charged with 13 counts of child molestation. All but two are thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling invalidated a California law extending the statute of limitations. In 2004, Kiesle pleaded no contest to a felony charge of molesting a young girl in 1995 at his Truckee vacation home. In March 2009, Kiesle was released on parole, but violated parole in October and was sent back to prison. He was released again in February of this year.
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