Twin Cities Catholics Divided on Church Leadership

By Josh Rosenthal
KTSP
November 10, 2013

http://kstp.com/news/stories/S3214071.shtml?cat=1

[with video]

They're protestors, but they're also Catholics, and marching in front of the St. Paul Cathedral isn't easy.

"It's not an easy thing for any Catholic to do," said Virginia Meuers.

Added Bob Beutel, "it's hard, it's painful, it's something wrong in our family."

As Paula Ruddy put it, "this is very difficult. There's nothing joyful about this experience."

The group of a few dozen people who protested Saturday afternoon wants Archbishop John Nienstedt to resign after the way the church handled accusations of sexual misconduct.

"We are the church, this is our church," Beutel said, "and we not only have a right to speak up, we've got a duty to speak up."

KSTP reached out to the Minneapolis-St.Paul Archdiocese for comment, and they gave us a statement from Archbishop Nienstedt. It reads in part, "it is my most sincere hope that the commitments and actions that my leadership team and I are taking, and will continue to take, will restore trust with our communities."

For some Catholics, that trust is already there.

"I feel like Archbishop Nienstedt has been very forthcoming in the way he's been dealing with things lately," said Lorena Dillon, adding that recent actions like forming a task force to look into the abuse allegations show Nienstedt is doing as good of a job as possible. "He's made it very clear that once everything has been found out and discovered that he will make the truth known."

The statement from Archbishop Neinstedt also says more information about actions the church is taking will be released "in the coming weeks."