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TRANSCRIPT
This Feast of St. Louis takes us to the city of St. Louis where, a year ago today, Mitchell T. Rozanski was installed as archbishop. Church Militant’s Kristine Christlieb reviews Rozanski’s track record so far.
When Mitchell Rozanski was installed last summer, the city’s Catholic community was under attack.
Just weeks before, Catholics had been beaten while trying to protect the statue of St. Louis, the city’s patron saint, from being toppled.
If ever a strong Catholic leader was needed, it was then.
But Rozanski pulled into St. Louis from his previous diocese in Springfield-Massachusetts weighed down with a trunkful of baggage.
In 2014, the year Rozanski was installed as bishop of Springfield, a man came forward reporting he was sexually abused as a 9-year-old.
One of the man’s abusers was former Springfield bishop, Christopher Weldon.
The man, under the name John Doe, claimed his abuse included “severe anal penetration by multiple perpetrators” — that “Weldon raped him ‘multiple times’ [in] ‘multiple locations.”’
Rozanski and his staff sat on the case for years.
Within six months of his arrival in St. Louis, Rozanski’s management of the Springfield case became the basis of a lawsuit in which he is accused of behaving with “callous disregard towards plaintiff’s suffering, further victimizing plaintiff.”
Abp. Rozanski: “But I want to apologize for the chronic mishandling of this case time and time again since 2014.”
CREDO of the Catholic Laity, an organization of faithful St. Louis Catholics, is praising Rozanski for his support of the Latin Mass and for standing against mandatory vaccinations and masking in the schools.
But in a statement released yesterday, they also said they “do have pro-life and now eucharistic concerns.”
Perhaps what they have in mind is the archbishop’s approval of vaccine clinics at parishes, Catholic schools and St. Vincent de Paul stores or his directive that priests not sign requests for religious exemptions from the vaccine.
CREDO also wants to talk with the archbishop about St. Louis Catholic hospitals referring parents for abortion.
As the abuse crisis has shown, Mitchell Rozanski is not the only bishop accused of “callous disregard” for victims’ suffering.
Archbishop Rozanski was one of 67 bishops who urged there be no discussion of “eucharist coherence” at the spring gathering of the U.S. bishops.
— Campaign 32075 —
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