MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio
[with audio]
By Madeleine Baran and Mike Cronin, Minnesota Public Radio
October 4, 2013
Upset that her superiors had refused to take action, a former church official reported to police that leaders of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis had kept secret for eight years images of pornograpy — some of it showing children — belonging to one of its priests.
Jennifer Haselberger, the archdiocese’s former chancellor for canonical affairs, marched the images she’d found into the offices of one church leader after another in May 2012. But none responded.
The last straw for Haselberger came after she provided Archbishop John Nienstedt with copies of some of the images she had discovered in the archdiocese’s files on the Rev. Jonathan Shelley, 52. She said the photos showed boys performing oral sex. The Rev. Peter Laird, the archdiocese’s vicar general at the time, Nienstedt’s deputy, ordered her to hand over the pornographic images.
“I did as I was told,” said Haselberger, who resigned in April. “I went back to my office. I closed the door and I called Ramsey County.”
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