MINNESOTA
TheMediaReport
Madeleine Baran and Tom Scheck of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) recently trumpeted the lurid story that a computer owned in 2004 by a Catholic priest from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis contained e-mail messages that “may have included inappropriate correspondence” with a “possible minor,” thus suggesting that the priest might be a child molester.
Indeed, any story about a Catholic priest committing a crime with a minor is not only troubling but big news, and the duo’s eye-opening story received wide media attention.
However, as it turns out, the priest, Rev. Jonathan Shelley, a very popular cleric in his region, was simply corresponding with a longtime friend who was not a minor at all.
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