KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star
Editorial
The only reassuring news to come out of an arbitrator’s recent finding against the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph is that its Victim Advocacy Program, created in 2008 in response to the priest abuse scandal, is operating well.
But every other conclusion of the arbitrator — upheld last week by Jackson County Circuit Judge Bryan Round — brought shame to the diocese and provided more than enough reasons for Bishop Robert W. Finn, already convicted of a misdemeanor, to resign.
In ordering the diocese to pay $1.1 million for violating its agreement with sex abuse victims, arbitrator Hollis Hanover was blunt: “Where they (the victims) expected protection, they received desertion; where the assertion of authority on their behalf was required, they received betrayal.”
He also said he hopes “that I am dead wrong in my opinion that this Diocese as presently constituted will not mend its ways.”
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