Retired Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland has admitted that he returned sexually abusive priests to active ministry without telling parishioners because he knew they wouldn't be accepted otherwise."No parish would have accepted a priest unless you could say that he has gone through the kind of psychological examination and that he's not a risk to the parish," Archbishop Weakland said in a portion of a videotaped deposition released Wednesday.
The Northwestern reports that Weakland gave the deposition in June to a lawyer representing seven men and women who claim they were assaulted by priests. The cases are expected to go to trial next summer.
Lawyer Jeffery Anderson released the videotape after the Archdiocese of Milwaukee argued last month that the deaths of key people involved covering up sexual abuse made it difficult to get a fair trial and a loss could bankrupt the archdiocese.
Anderson said Wednesday the trial would be fair because Weakland's testimony proved a cover-up existed.
Archdiocese spokesman Jerry Topczewski reiterated Wednesday the difficulty of investigating cases where many of the principle figures have since died.
"We'll probably never have a real complete picture of what happened because we'd never be able to ask the people involved," he said. "Regardless, our priority has been and continues to be, how can we best reach out to those who were abused and achieve some resolution."
In the deposition, Weakland said he never reported suspected abuse while in office and never directly asked accused priests whether the allegations were true. He also said he never discussed what he knew about the sexual abuse with his successor, Archbishop Timothy Dolan.
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(Source: CTHUS)