Statement from the Diocese of Crookston Regarding Additional Priest Name Disclosures

Diocese of Crookston
September 26, 2017

http://www.crookston.org/resources/clergy/documents-clergy/news/1477-statement-re-additional-priest-name-disclosures/file

[Note: As of 9/28/17, the Diocese of Crookston had two lists of accused priests posted on its website; one list includes these "new" priests, and one list does not include them. Both lists delete a laicized priest, Fr. Gerald Foley, who had been added to the list on 10/23/14. Moreover, the diocese's Reporting Abuse page links to the list that does not include Plakut and Strub, and has deleted Foley. See the BishopAccountability.org database entry for Fr. Gerald K. Foley.]

The Diocese of Crookston was notified last week that two religious order priests assigned within the Diocese in the 1940s and 1950s were added by St. John’s Abbey to its list of men “likely to have offended against minors”.

Casimir Plakut was ordained for the Order of St. Benedict in 1938. He died in 1988. Augustine John Strub was ordained for the Order of St. Benedict in 1947. He left the priesthood in the early 1960s and died in 2015.

The Diocese takes any allegation of abuse of a minor very seriously. Plakut and Strub have been added to the list of “priests who have been credibly accused of abuse of a minor” on the Diocese of Crookston’s website.