Recently unsealed personnel files from the Diocese of Brooklyn show that diocesan leaders knew explicit details of repeated sexual misconduct and abuse allegations against a priest for decades before he was officially barred from ministry.
New York Supreme Court Judge Joanne Quiñones in January ordered the unsealing of diocesan records related to Patrick Sexton, a former priest who was officially barred from ministry there in 2004 and was eventually laicized by Pope Benedict XVI.
The judge’s order was connected to a lawsuit against the Brooklyn Diocese regarding alleged abuse by Sexton.
A November 2004 letter from then-moderator of the diocesan curia, Monsignor Otto Garcia, to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) — said that “for many years” the diocese “has had to deal with numerous allegations of sexual abuse” leveled against Sexton.
Msgr. Garcia told Cardinal Ratzinger — who the following April would be elected Pope Benedict XVI — that the allegations included “taking photographs of young boys disrobed, sexual touching over and under the clothes of the victim, masturbation, and oral sex.”
Sexton “admitted to a number of these allegations” and “denied
