UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Kevin O’Brien
What on earth is wrong with our bishops?
As bad as I thought Bishop Finn handled the Fr. Ratigan case, I had no idea that he ignored the red flags described in this letter alone. The letter was written in 2010 by Julie Hess, the principal of the Catholic school at the parish where Fr. Ratigan was pastor, and delivered to Finn’s Vicar General, his second-in-command.
All you need to keep in mind while reading it is that Fr. Ratigan was later discovered to have been busy taking pornographic photographs of the little girls of his parish (one as young as age two), was molesting them, and has since been sentenced to 50 years in Federal prison without the possibility of parole.
How did Fr. Ratigan’s ordinary react to this letter and to the unfolding of this horrific case?
Bishop Finn utterly and totally ignored this letter. As far as I know, he never even acknowledged receiving it until more than a year later, after the story broke, when he claimed he finally “read it for the first time.” Even if this is true (and I doubt it), how can the Vicar General receive a letter like this and not insist that the bishop read it immediately and act on it?
Bishop Finn failed to report the abuse of these children to the police once it became known to him.
Bishop Finn refused to let the parishioners know their children were victimized by Fr. Ratigan.
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