“The kids are going to be hurt by the cuts. The whole issue of who is teaching the music class, in the end, the kids have lost no matter what I turn out to be,” Rassier said.

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(FOX 9) ST. JOSEPH, Minn. – Parents in Cold Spring met about the man who is considered a ‘person of interest’ in the disappearance case of Jacob Wetterling. He was announced as the new music teacher at a St. Boniface school.

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BISHOPS who failed to report priests accused of sexually abusing children should be prosecuted in the courts, according to a former monk and canon lawyer. US attorney Patrick J Wall said nothing would change within the Catholic Church “until a bishop does jail time”.

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I am impressed by your dedication to this important but daunting task. What a pity there has been so much dishonesty by the monks.

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According to an email sent by Aaron Raverty on August 2nd:

“In our continuing effort to be responsible and to clarify our position and use of terminology, the abbey’s response team, in cooperation with legal counsel, has written this “Statement on the Legal Status of Accused Monks” that will be posted on the abbey website.”

Two days after it was put up, however, Michael Ford’s statement was removed from the St. John’s Abbey web site.

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I have been wanting to write a letter to both SJU and CSB to let them know how I feel; that I intend to withhold any donations; that I will never intend to send my children there, and that I plan to share this information and my thoughts on the matter with the people I know and love so that they are aware of what is going on there until and unless they take real action to rectify this situation.

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“As long as St. John’s has this man on the payroll, I will no longer give my money to St. John’s,” Busch wrote. “I will not support lies and false statements and half truths about anyone.”

[Webmaster's Note: This quote is not about Abbot John Klassen, Prior Tom Andert or any of the offending monks and other personnel at St. John's Abbey, St. John's University or St. John's Prep School in Collegeville, Minnesota. Perhaps if more people withheld money for legitimate reasons [ Like this Alum ] , the Abbey would fully disclose the crimes committed by its members and representatives, and reach out to victims.]

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Brother, I suspect St. John’s University will be able to ride it out, but could a big institution look much worse than it does in Erin Carlyle’s City Pages story? The one about the Collegeville school caving in to conservative benefactors demanding it fire senior fellow/ex-Strib columnist Nick Coleman? Writes Carlyle: “In September, Len Busch, who has given $20,000 to the St. John’s theology department each of the last three years, authored a handwritten message [to the school] about Coleman. ‘As long as St. John’s has this man on the payroll, I will no longer give my money to St. John’s,’ Busch wrote. ‘I will not support lies and false statements and half truths about anyone.’ ”

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“The monastic community [in Collegeville] no doubt includes some heterosexual men, along with a great many who must be more or less uneasy about their powerful attraction to other monks or to the boys who surround them at the prep school and the university. Alcoholism is a very serious problem among the monks of St. John’s … and is probably connected to the suppression of homoerotic feelings. Those monks who cannot act on their sexual feelings are probably intensely jealous of those who do.”

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[Webmaster's Note: This is yet another attempt by the abbey's public relations team to shift the focus from the members of its community who have raped, sodomized and otherwise destroyed the lives of 100's of victims who trusted the monks and other offending personnel in Collegeville. The new "individual safety plan" terminology makes no sense until you consider that what the abbey is protecting is their reputation, period. Having "restricted" or "supervised" monks is bad for business.

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Since the “Meet the Monks” section [ View ] was launched in May, the 721 monk profiles have been viewed a total of 64,478 times.

The most “popular” monks in June and July:

1. Fr. Francisco Schulte (1479 Views)
2. Fr. Thomas Gillespie (1468)
3. Fr. Tom Andert (1367)

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(Fox9) COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. – In 2002, the head of St. John’s Abbey told the public monks, who were accused of sexual misconduct, they would live under restrictions. Many thought it was a sort of house arrest, but that was not the case. The FOX 9 Investigators found just how easy it is for a so called restricted monk to leave St. John’s and befriend a family, a family that didn’t initially know about the monk’s restrictions because St. John’s had not made his name public.

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There are several stories here:

1. In 2002, two former St. John’s Prep School students brought claims of sexual abuse against Br. Phillips. Br. Phillips allegedly fondled both of these victims, and sodomized one of the victims with his thumb. St. John’s Abbey settled these two claims of sexual abuse (and possibly several others) against Br. Phillips.

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“This is Abbot John Klassen calling from St. John’s and I am returning your calls. I was finally successful in speaking to [name] regarding Br. Jim Phillips. I spoke with her directly about the fact that Br. Jim is living with supervision, that there were two allegations from the 1980’s, early 80s, that we did an investigation, that despite his denial of these events, nevertheless, he was not convincing of his account of events, that he has been living with supervision since that time.”

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Brother Jim was removed from public ministry immediately at the time your allegation came to our attention in August 2002 and has been at the abbey since that time. At no time since has he had access to minors as part of his work.

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After more than eight years of covering up credible allegations of sexual abuse by one of its members, a source at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN has admitted that Br. Jim Phillips is a “Monk Under Supervision”.

Br. Jim Phillips in mid-1970′s

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This morning we were contacted by a second victim of Fr. Othmar Hohman.

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We recently received a copy of a 2005 St. John’s Abbey document which contradicts the Vatican’s position on homosexuality. Following the Vatican’s announcement, at least one monk in Collegeville, Bob Pierson, resigned from his duties.

1. We believe that human sexual orientation, both heterosexual and homosexual, is blessed by God as part of the original blessing of creation. We reject any suggestion that God withholds his blessings from some parts of his creation, and we do not believe that homosexual persons are objectively disordered.

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“This website and the effort by Pat Marker is one of the most significant achievements in child protection in the country, in terms of dissemination of information and speaking and telling the stories,” Jeff Anderson – May 19, 2010

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On Wednesday evening, Minneapolis television station Fox9 [ Link ] will air a report on Br. Jim Phillips, a monk at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota.

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We have learned that Br. Isidore Glyer was removed from his position at the Prep School after allegations of inappropriate activity surfaced.

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Monks with a Safety Plan may not have social relationships or individual contact with vulnerable persons of any age on the Saint John’s campus or off-campus, in any setting.

Webmaster’s Note: This Official Statement should be read carefully. The Abbey continues to hold itself, and its offending monks, to such a low standard of responsibility and accountability. Sadly, offending monks are failing to meet even the low expectations set by the Abbey.

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(SC Times) Authorities finished sifting through six truckloads of dirt today that are part of the Jacob Wetterling abduction investigation.

Items of interest were found and will be sent to forensic labs for additional testing, according to the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office.

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The following monks from St. John’s Abbey have web sites:

Fr. Tom Andert
Fr. Timothy Backous
Br. Dennis Beach
Fr. Nickolas Becker
Br. Isaac Connolly

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