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	We Called Him “Kes” Clint Reilly Companies April 29, 2010 http://www.clintreilly.com/kes/ We called him “Kes.” He was a big, burly guy who played center on the basketball team and hurled the shot put in track. Kes was an excellent student; very smart. We liked him. He was our classmate at St. Joseph’s High School in Mountain View and St. Patrick’s College/Seminary in Menlo Park during the 1960s. There were hundreds of students in the seminary and dozens in our class. The all-male seminary was filled with young Catholic teenagers and men studying to become priests from throughout the Bay Area, Sacramento and the Central Valley, as well as Hawaii. On the two campuses, students ranged from 13 to 25 years old. Kes and I were both students for the priesthood from the Oakland Diocese so we sometimes commuted home together on Christmas and holidays. I left in 1969 but Kes stayed and was ordained a priest in 1972. “Kes” was Steve Kiesle, the pedophile priest who was allowed to continue in his role for years after being convicted for tying up and molesting two young boys in a church rectory in 1978. Kiesle’s story has taken on new weight after recent revelations that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict – ignored pleas from Oakland Bishop John Cummins to remove Kiesle from the priesthood in 1985. At the time, Cardinal Ratzinger was in charge of these matters under Pope John Paul II. He cited Kiesle’s young age (he was 38) and the damage his firing would do to “the good of the Universal Church” in his decision to delay action against Kiesle. Kiesle apparently molested numerous children during his years as a priest. He also pleaded no contest to a felony and served time in jail for molesting a young girl at his Truckee home after being forced out of the priesthood in 1987. I haven’t seen Steve in more than 40 years. But I have read the many news stories and compared notes with my old seminary classmates – almost all of whom are happily married with kids – having left the seminary long before they were ordained to the priesthood. There are also a few fellow seminarians who came out publicly as gay after exiting and are living full, productive lives. Here are three reasons why the Kiesle case is so deeply troubling. First, the all-male seminary had no sex education programs whatsoever. None. The philosophy seemed to be that if a young man found out about sex, he would clearly not choose celibacy. This head-in-the-sand, cover-their-eyes approach was profoundly irresponsible. The vast majority of seminary students dropped out and never became priests and their preparation for sexual socialization was sorely lacking. And those who became priests were woefully unprepared for the super-human demands of celibate life. Second, Kiesle had a predilection toward young children as a seminarian. He was known to fraternize with small children who were most often under 10 years old. His focus on pre-adolescent kids was noticed by his peers. However, naive teenagers in the seminary’s asexual bubble had no idea that such behavior was potentially pathological or even abnormal. The adults should have known better. Third, the priest faculty ignored telltale signs of possible pedophile tendencies by Kiesle for 12 years in the seminary and many more years as a priest. Numerous children were molested by a priest who never should have been ordained in the first place. Once ordained, he was not monitored by priest peers or diocesan authorities to prevent the molestation of innocent children whose lives have been permanently scarred. Sadly, Steve Kiesle is not the only graduate of St. Joseph’s and St. Patrick’s to molest children or teenagers. The names of many others were reported in a scathing MediaNews expose from 2008. We will never know if Steve Kiesle himself might have been saved if the seminary had intervened with appropriate help when he was just a young man. But we know for sure that his innocent victims would have been spared had he been diagnosed and expelled.
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