She made him impure
Father Joseph Jeyapaul is a priest from India who admitted to raping two adolescent girls in Minnesota when he served the Crookston diocese from 2004 to 2005.
After being charged with the abuse, which included rape and forcing at least one of the girls to perform fellatio on him, he fled home to India, where he was eventually arrested on an Interpol warrant. He was then extradited back to Minnesota, where he admitted his heinous crimes and entered a plea bargain in which, in exchange for a lighter sentence, he copped to molestation of one of the girls.
Jeyapaul was suspended from the priesthood and served a year and a day in prison in Minnesota, then was deported back to India after his release last July. The Minnesota diocese where he worked also settled a civil lawsuit with the victims in which one accused him of systematic abuse in the confessional of the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, Minnesota, where he would then tell the girl it was her fault, that she had made him “impure.”
Welllll, yes, but…he didn’t perform any abortions, or ordain any women priests – he didn’t do anything seriously wrong – so the Vatican has turned the other cheek.
In February, the Vatican approved lifting his suspension from the priesthood and agreed that he could be reassigned to a new parish in India. That parish even made him the diocesan head of its commission for education.
He’s so good with children, you see.
One of the victims has filed a lawsuit.
“Children deserve to be protected in India and nobody is doing this at this point,” [Megan] Peterson said at the televised press conference. “This pope has said that bishops who cover up [sexual abuse] and the offending clerics have no place in the church. I feel like this is a slap in the face.”
Peterson is not the only one calling foul. The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) says this is the last straw. “It may be the most irresponsible Vatican move we’ve ever seen: Catholic officials in Rome have lifted the suspension of a recently convicted predator priest,” SNAP’s outreach director Barbara Dorris said in a statement. “We are stunned and saddened by such blatant recklessness and callousness.”
I wonder if the Vatican is thinking clerical child rape is more tolerated in India than it is in Minnesota, and that therefore they would get away with it.
Whether Jeyapaul’s new diocese will consider the lawsuit and refuse to let the errant priest keep his job is of great concern to Anderson and victims alike.
“The Vatican under Pope Francis and the Bishop in India have both made the decision to permit this predator to continue in ministry after his conviction for child sex abuse and are promoting him as safe and trustworthy and holy,” Anderson said. “And as we speak, there are hundreds of children who we know trust him and believe him to be trustworthy.”
This is Pope Frankie, the one hailed as the kinder gentler face of the Vatican. Don’t you believe it.
Well you see, the wand is magic with this one?
Arrgh. <– or whatever the correct term is in Urdu, for example.
And the Vatican has a lot of cheek to turn.
But, but, but I keep hearing how Pope Francis is the bestest sweetest Pope ever! He even said some nice things about poor people and some not totally hateful things about gays and atheists. I’m sure this is all just a misunderstanding.
Liberation theology is still Catholic theology…
Didn’t the Vatican ever learn anything from the Watergate scandal? It was bad enough when some of Richard Nixon’s henchmen did various misdeeds. But when they tried to cover it up, they made it so much worse that Richard Nixon decided to resign rather than face impeachment.
@ 5 Loren Petrich
They learned that if you declare the pontiff infallible they can’t be impeached.
;-)
This isn’t even really a cover-up.
I once saw a bumper sticker: ‘Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.’
I don’t think the driver grasped the irony either.