Priests

Msgr. Robert J. Gallagher stood before parishioners at St. Charles Borromeo Church on Sunday, searching for the right words to reassure them after a tumultuous week that saw the release of previously secret personnel files on priests who molested children, the public rebuke of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and the resignation of a Santa Barbara bishop. "Everybody has to face sin and God's grace in their own life," Gallagher told members of the North Hollywood parish that Mahony has called home since he retired two years ago. "And we do it as a community when we try to bring things into the light.

The Vatican has reinstated a priest suspended in 2002 over allegations of sexual misconduct and will allow him to return to active ministry after undergoing counseling, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati said. Father James Kiffmeyer was accused of abusing two students in 1990 and around 1986. The students reported the allegations in 1997 and 2002. Kiffmeyer was placed on paid leave and appealed to the Vatican, which ruled the students waited too long.

Re "New Order of Catholic Priests Is Forming to Fight Abortions," March 31: I noticed that the Catholic Church is setting up a new institution to fight increasing secularism in the U.S., especially to do with abortion and right-to-life issues. Perhaps they should look into why there is so much secularism. Could it be that a church that won't allow women to become priests and continues to blame women for most problems (as described in Genesis) could be the cause? Women are no longer content to sit around and let men tell them what to do. Julia Dunphy Harbor City I am amazed at the audacity of the Catholic Church.

BALTIMORE -- Authorities charged a man Tuesday with shooting a former Catholic parish priest who he claimed had molested him over a three-year period in the 1990s. Dontee Stokes was arrested Monday night after allegedly shooting Father Maurice Blackwell several times, wounding him in the hand and near his left hip, police said. Blackwell, 56, was listed in serious but stable condition Tuesday night at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

Retired priest George Neville Rucker walked into Los Angeles County Superior Court facing life in prison Monday for allegedly molesting a dozen girls and walked out a free man. Rucker, 82, had been plucked off a cruise ship bound for Russia last fall after he was charged. But prosecutors dropped the charges in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down California's effort to prosecute molesters in older cases. The charges were dismissed by Superior Court Judge Robert J.

A Los Angeles judge Thursday ordered the release of confidential personnel documents of Franciscan priests accused of child sexual abuse. Superior Court Judge Peter D. Lichtman overruled most objections by attorneys for the Roman Catholic order and the alleged molesters, who argued that many documents should remain private due to privilege and constitutional issues. The files are to be released within 21 days, but an appeal could delay matters.

St. Louis Archbishop Raymond L. Burke has excommunicated a priest and the board of directors of a traditionally Polish parish that resisted his efforts to put the parish's property and assets under his control. In an archdiocesan newspaper column, Burke said Father Marek B. Bozek and St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish's six lay directors committed an act of schism when the board hired Bozek, who Burke said left another diocese without his bishop's permission.

A Catholic priest in Rwanda was convicted of participating in the 1994 genocide in his country by ordering militiamen to set fire to a church and then bulldoze it while 2,000 people were taking shelter inside. The Rev. Athanase Seromba was sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to 15 years in prison, although he will get credit for four years already served. The tribunal is based in Arusha, Tanzania.

BALTIMORE -- A Roman Catholic priest was released from the hospital Saturday, five days after he was shot by a man who had claimed the cleric sexually abused him as a teenager. Father Maurice Blackwell, 56, left the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center about 10 a.m., a hospital spokeswoman said. Blackwell was shot three times Monday outside his home after refusing to talk to Dontee Stokes, 26, police said. Stokes was charged with attempted murder, gun violations and assault.

Laszlo Toekes, 38, the ethnic Hungarian priest whose arrest helped spark Romania's revolution last December, has undergone successful pelvic surgery in Hungary after a car crash, Hungarian newspapers reported Friday.