Detroit priest accused of sex abuse is allowed to return

Alleged contact wasn't a crime by '70s law

February 24, 2004

BY DAVID CRUMM AND PATRICIA MONTEMURRI
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

The Rev. Brian Bjorklund, a Catholic priest from Detroit and U.S. Navy chaplain who was removed from ministry last year for the alleged sexual abuse of a minor, has been reinstated as an active priest by the Vatican, Detroit Catholic leaders said Monday.

Bjorklund's legal victory under church law comes before a national report due out Friday that will reveal the extent of sexual abuse of minors by priests during the last 50 years in the United States.

At the same time, Vatican officials are signaling their hesitancy to carry out the strict zero-tolerance policy on the sexual abuse of minors that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops approved in 2002.

On Monday, a Vatican task force called the Pontifical Academy for Life criticized the U.S. bishops' policy in a 220-page report, based on a summary of scientific research into sexual abuse of minors. The report calls for treatment and criminal penalties but said it may be possible to change the behavior of men who may have been involved in a single, long-ago incident.

In Detroit, Auxiliary Bishop Walter Hurley said the verdict on Bjorklund was sent privately to Cardinal Adam Maida earlier this month. Since then, Hurley and other church officials have been reviewing Bjorklund's personnel file and talking with the Navy about reemploying him.

The priest, 64, was ordained in 1966 and served parishes including St. Alfred in Taylor, St. Linus in Dearborn Heights, St. Andrew in Rochester and St. Timothy in Trenton. In the mid-1970s, he also served as a campus minister at Oakland University.

Bjorklund now lives in Lemoore, Calif. He could not be reached for comment.

Joe Maher, a Redford Township businessman who founded a legal support group for accused priests, said Bjorklund had maintained his innocence.

"I talked to him a couple of weeks ago, and he was praying and saying his private mass that this would be over soon, that the nightmare would be over," Maher said.

On suspension, Bjorklund was prohibited from identifying himself as a priest, wearing priestly garb or saying mass for anybody except himself. With his reinstatement, those restrictions are lifted.

Until now, spokesmen for the Conference of Catholic Bishops have said its policy is to remove any priest who is credibly accused of sexual involvement with anyone younger than 18, no matter how long ago the contact occurred.

But the Vatican ruling in the Bjorklund case shows that carrying out such a sweeping policy may not be possible under the code of canon law that governs the 1-billion-member church around the world. In the Bjorklund ruling, Vatican officials point out that the incident involved alleged sexual contact with a 17-year-old boy in the early 1970s.

Details of the allegation were not released, but Hurley, who handles abuse investigations for the archdiocese, said the contact was not considered a crime under church law at the time.

"This currently is a crime under church law, and it has been for a good many years now, but at that particular time back in the early 1970s, it was not a crime," Hurley said. "And there has been nothing in his file that would suggest that there was anything other than this single incident."

Hurley said civil authorities he has consulted also say the alleged contact was not a crime under civil laws in the early 1970s.

The Vatican's decision, Maher said, reflected "basic common sense and basic law" in a 30-year-old case. But David Clohessy, a cofounder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he was dismayed.

"It's more lamentable hair-splitting. Not atypical, but very troubling," Clohessy said.

Since March 2002, the Archdiocese of Detroit has removed more than 20 priests from active ministry because of allegations of sexual abuse involving minors. Some of those cases are being reviewed by the Vatican. In January, the Vatican ordered that one accused priest, Joseph Sito, be permanently defrocked.