(St. Cloud Times) St. John’s Abbey has removed from its website a statement about the work history of one of its monks accused of sexual abuse after questions were raised about the validity of the information in the statement.
The statement was posted to the abbey website May 18 in response to a lawsuit filed that day against the Rev. Francisco Schulte. Schulte was accused of sexually abusing several students in the mid-1980s in North Carolina and in Puerto Rico, where Schulte worked on behalf of the abbey.
That statement was the abbey’s response to media inquiries and outlined when the abbey first learned about abuse allegations against Schulte and where Schulte was after the abbey learned of the allegations.
But the abbey’s own publications, including the Abbey Quarterly and Abbey Banner, contradicted a key part of the abbey’s statement that Schulte from February 1992 through June 2002 was living at St. John’s Abbey with “prudent, non-risk” limitations on his ministry.
A review of abbey publications shows that Schulte in 1997 and 1998 was subprior of St. Augustine’s Monastery in the Bahamas and that he studied in Rome in 1994 to complete his doctorate.
The abbey hasn’t released any additional statements about Schulte or the apparent inconsistencies between its statement and the information in abbey publications.
The abbey removed the statement from its website this week.
Abbey removes statement about monk’s work history
by David Unze
St. Cloud Times
June 3, 2010
