Accused priest will not fight extradition
Source: Agencies |
April 7, 2010, Wednesday
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A ROMAN Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a teenage parishioner in Minnesota said yesterday he would willingly leave his native India and try to clear his name in the courts if the United States tried to extradite him.
Meanwhile, the bishop who oversees the Reverend Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul said he had overruled a Vatican recommendation that the accused priest be removed from the priesthood, and applied his own lesser punishment.
"Unless guilt is proved, we cannot take any strong action," said the Most Reverend A. Almaraj of the Diocese of Ootacamund in southern India.
Critics of the Catholic Church highlighted Jeyapaul's case as another example of what they said is a practice of protecting child-molesting priests from the law.
Jeyapaul, 55, came to Minnesota in 2004 and was assigned to work at the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Greenbush, just south of the Canadian border. In 2005, he went to India to visit his ailing mother.
While he was abroad, he was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old girl, and Bishop Victor Balke of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, told Jeyapaul not to come back or he would go to the police. Jeyapaul was later charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old female parishioner.
Jeyapaul said he would not put up a fight if the US tried to extradite him. "I am ready to go because I am innocent. I am ready to prove I did not do any wrong," he said.
In a separate case, a church official confirmed yesterday that a priest convicted of fondling a 12-year-old altar girl in New York more than a decade ago had returned home to India where he still served as a priest.
The Reverend Francis X. Nelson was sentenced to four months in prison in 2003 in connection with his role as a visiting priest at a church in Brooklyn. His victim testified that Nelson showed up at her grandmother's apartment uninvited and groped her.
His bishop, the Most Reverend Peter Remigius, confirmed that Nelson had returned to India and continued to work as a priest in Kottar in southern India.
"His conviction was finished, and he has finished his term," Remigius said. "He is not in charge of any parish. He is helping people who are alcoholic."
(AP)
Meanwhile, the bishop who oversees the Reverend Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul said he had overruled a Vatican recommendation that the accused priest be removed from the priesthood, and applied his own lesser punishment.
"Unless guilt is proved, we cannot take any strong action," said the Most Reverend A. Almaraj of the Diocese of Ootacamund in southern India.
Critics of the Catholic Church highlighted Jeyapaul's case as another example of what they said is a practice of protecting child-molesting priests from the law.
Jeyapaul, 55, came to Minnesota in 2004 and was assigned to work at the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Greenbush, just south of the Canadian border. In 2005, he went to India to visit his ailing mother.
While he was abroad, he was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old girl, and Bishop Victor Balke of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, told Jeyapaul not to come back or he would go to the police. Jeyapaul was later charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old female parishioner.
Jeyapaul said he would not put up a fight if the US tried to extradite him. "I am ready to go because I am innocent. I am ready to prove I did not do any wrong," he said.
In a separate case, a church official confirmed yesterday that a priest convicted of fondling a 12-year-old altar girl in New York more than a decade ago had returned home to India where he still served as a priest.
The Reverend Francis X. Nelson was sentenced to four months in prison in 2003 in connection with his role as a visiting priest at a church in Brooklyn. His victim testified that Nelson showed up at her grandmother's apartment uninvited and groped her.
His bishop, the Most Reverend Peter Remigius, confirmed that Nelson had returned to India and continued to work as a priest in Kottar in southern India.
"His conviction was finished, and he has finished his term," Remigius said. "He is not in charge of any parish. He is helping people who are alcoholic."
(AP)
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