UNITED STATES
Whispers in the Loggia
Almost three years since his conviction for failing to report a priest’s trove of child pornography to civil authorities sparked wide calls for his removal from office, at Roman Noon the Pope accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn from the helm of Northwest Missouri’s diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph.
Weeks after the embattled prelate’s 62nd birthday, the move comes eight months after an apostolic visitation was ordered by Rome to gauge the tensions in the diocese, which Finn had led since 2005. Intriguingly, the KC vacancy has occurred as Pope Francis faces fresh calls to act against another prelate mired in controversy over charges of negligence amid his ties to an abuse case: the Chilean Bishop Juan Barros, whose recent arrival in a new see has been dogged by astonishing levels of public protest, all while Barros has been made to travel with riot police and guard dogs.
Back to Finn, the outcry for the bishop’s departure dates to the fallout of the 2012 bench trial that saw him found guilty of negligence in the case of Fr Shawn Ratigan, a local cleric whose explicit photos of young girls in various states of undress were reported to the diocese on their discovery by a technician, but not forwarded to police for several months. While the priest was subsequently charged with several federal counts of producing child pornography and sentenced to 50 years in jail, a local grand jury indicted Finn and the diocese on a single misdemeanor count of failing to report, becoming the first bishop in the English-speaking world to face criminal accountability for his handling of an abuse case.
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