Lawsuit Expected against St. John's Abbey, Priest

By St. Cloud Times
David Unze
November 18, 2013

http://www.sctimes.com/article/20131118/NEWS01/311180062/Lawsuit-expected-against-St-John-s-Abbey-priest

A press conference has been scheduled for Tuesday morning in St. Paul to announce the filing of a clergy sex abuse lawsuit against a former St. John’s Abbey priest.

The lawsuit names as defendants the Rev. Fran Hoefgen, St. John’s Abbey, the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and St. Luke Institute, a renowned treatment facility in Baltimore.

The lawsuit is being filed on behalf of a 30-year-old Minnesota man who accuses Hoefgen of sexually abusing him at a Hastings parish where Hoefgen was assigned after being sent to St. Luke for evaluation.

Hoefgen before that had served at a Cold Spring parish, where he was accused of sexually abusing a boy. That accusation led to his evaluation at St. Luke. No criminal charges were filed against Hoefgen.

He was among the list of monks named in 2002 as being on restrictions at the abbey. That same year Hoefgen wrote an apology that ran in a Twin Cities newspaper and which expressed his anguish and sorrow at what he had done in the Cold Spring incident.