Vatican accepts resignation of Kansas [City] bishop convicted of sex abuse coverup but remained in office

By Michelle Boorstein
WashingtPost
April 21, 2015

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/04/21/vatican-accepts-resignation-of-kansas-bishop-convicted-of-sex-abuse-coverup-but-remained-in-office/

In this Nov. 14, 2011 file photo, Bishop Robert Finn, of Kansas City, Mo., leaves a meeting at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ annual fall assembly in Baltimore.

The Vatican on Tuesday announced the resignation of a Kansas City, Mo., bishop who was convicted of a sex abuse cover-up but remained in office – a fact that particularly horrified abuse survivors and their advocates. Bishop Robert Finn’s resignation will be seen as a key achievement for Pope Francis, who has said his papacy would show more accountability for abuse within the church.

The Vatican announced the resignation of Finn, 62, in an unspecific, brief note in its daily bulletin:

“The Holy Father has accepted the resignation from the pastoral government of the diocese of St. Joseph-Kansas City, Mo. (United States) presented His Excellency Bishop Robert Finn,” it read.

Vatican Radio said the bulletin cited canon law 401, paragraph 2, which reads:

“A diocesan bishop who has become less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause is earnestly requested to present his resignation from office.”

Kansas City, Kan., Archbishop Joseph Naumann will be the Missouri diocese’s administrator, according to a statement to the National Catholic Reporter from Kansas City, Missouri archdiocese spokesman Jack Smith.

In a statement released to NCR, Naumann said that he wanted the next few months to be a “a time of grace and healing” for the diocese.

Finn was the only U.S. bishop to be criminally convicted in an abuse cover-up. He received two years of probation in 2012 for not telling authorities after a computer technician found hundreds of images of child pornography on a priest’s laptop and told Finn. Finn remained in office for three more years.

Particularly outspoken about Finn was Marie Collins, who sits on Francis’ advisory commission on abuse. Collins and others have helped keep Finn in the spotlight as a powerful symbol of what critics see as the church’s lack of accountability.

Reaction from abuse victims was not immediately available, but Collins was quoted in a piece this week, published before Finn’s resignation on Crux, a Catholic news site, as saying the pope’s advisory panel had given him a proposal for how to punish bishops who failed to protect minors from sexual abuse.

“I cannot understand how Bishop Finn is still in position, when anyone else with a conviction that he has could not run a Sunday school in a parish. He wouldn’t pass a background check,” she said in an interview with Crux. “I don’t know how anybody like that could be left in charge of a diocese.”

Finn will remain a bishop, Crux reported, but won’t lead a diocese. Francis will name his successor.