Diocese pays to settle abuse claim

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Amid growing pressure on the Catholic Church to rid itself of pedophiles, the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph said Monday it paid $25,000 in 1996 to settle a sexual abuse claim against a priest.

The alleged abuse occurred in the early 1980s, when the accuser was in grade school and the accused was his parish priest, the Rev. Patrick Rush, vicar general of the diocese, told The Kansas City Star.

The accuser made his allegations to church officials in 1995. The priest had left the priesthood and was dead by then. Rush declined to identify the accuser, the priest or how the priest died.

After an internal investigation, church officials decided to offer a settlement. "We were not able to disprove it," Rush said.

It was the only accusation of child sexual abuse made against that priest, and the only time since 1994 -- when three priests in the diocese were named as suspected child sexual abusers -- that the diocese had to deal with such accusations, Rush said.

Dioceses nationwide have been under pressure to rid themselves of any priests with a history of sexual misconduct following a sexual abuse scandal that erupted last month in the Boston Archdiocese.

Up to a dozen Roman Catholic priests in Southern California were ordered to retire in a sex abuse scandal there, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

In Kansas City, Rush said that any current cases of sexual abuse that came to the attention of diocesan officials would be turned over to authorities. But the diocese will not make public or give authorities the names of priests previously accused of sexually abusing children, he said. Releasing names "does not heal the pain of victims," Rush said.

Bishop Raymond J. Boland of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph assured parishioners last weekend that no priests currently serving the diocese's schools or parishes had ever been accused of child sex abuse.