Diocese of St. Cloud reinstates Fr. Aaron Kuhn despite ongoing criminal sexual assault investigation Author’s note: I typically would not publish this type of article right before a holiday break.

Diocese of St. Cloud reinstates Fr. Aaron Kuhn despite ongoing criminal sexual assault investigation

Fr. Aaron Kuhn to return from sexual misconduct suspension to assume office role with Diocese of St. Cloud department that handles marriage annulments.

He will not return as pastor of Mary Mother of the Church ACC.

x.com/SkepticallyD...

The letter was read during the homily this morning at Kuhn's parish:

www.facebook.com/MarysACC/vid...

Fr. Aaron Kuhn update:

A letter from Diocese of St. Cloud's Bishop Neary to Mary Mother of the Church ACC says Kuhn reports "great personal growth" during his stay in residential treatment.

Kuhn was suspended in June after accusations of "sexual misconduct involving an adult."

Everyone who works in communications in the Catholic Church should be aware of this phenomenon:

Suspended Diocese of St. Cloud priest Fr. Aaron Kuhn's "Mary Mother of the Church ACC" parish continues to ignore my messages asking them why they removed their pastor's sexual misconduct leave of absence announcement from their website.

I asked them not to give in to church cover-up culture.

A priest's sexual misconduct is a public scandal that requires public repentance. It's not a private matter between the priest and his parish.

None of the priests I've written about have ever offered any public apology or promises to reform. It's a shame.

Last week, you could hit "8" to be connected to Fr. Steven's line.

Now that option is removed and the parish's Business Manager handles all calls to Fr. Steven (and sounds super annoyed to hear from me).

Nov. 15, 2024 voicemail to Fr. Steven Costello YouTube video by @SkepticallyDan

After I left this voicemail to suspended and reinstated priest Fr. Steven Costello, his St. Paul Catholic parish in New Bern, NC removed his name from the parish phone menu options.

Costello continues to ignore my emails asking him to publicly clarify his commitment to reform.

For those who plan to delete Twitter:

You can "squat" your old username with a new, blank account by changing your username and then immediately reserving your old username with a new account.

20+ years after the Dallas Charter, the general default strategy of Catholic Church officials I deal with (both clergy and lay roles) is to provide as little information as possible and hope that people will forget.

A church that boasts Christ as its founder should do better.

a screen cap showing the Accessibility Settings/Alt text/ "Require alt text before posting" switch. White text on the dark blue grey background

It took me awhile to start doing it on the regular, but if you could please add alt text to your images/gif/videos for low vision/vision impaired peeps that would be amazing. There's a setting in the accessibly menu that forces me to add it before I can post.

Suspended Diocese of St. Cloud priest Fr. Aaron Kuhn's parish website removed the "Bishop Neary's letters" link that provided information on their pastor sexual misconduct investigation.

I contacted the parish and asked them reconsider and post the letters again for the sake of transparency.

I'll probably delete my accounts but I haven't decide for sure.

Those of you who migrated from the dark place…

Did you delete your account or did you just decide to stop posting over there?

Fr. Aaron Kuhn's suspension and the Catholic hierarchy's inept "rest and reassign" approach to priest sexual misconduct with adults Imagine a large bank receives an allegation that one of their branch managers engaged in sexual misconduct.

More details about the case:
skepticallydan.substack.com/p/fr-aaron-k...

Fr. Aaron Kuhn photo

As far as I know, suspended Diocese of St. Cloud priest Fr. Aaron Kuhn remains in a "residential treatment program" after allegations of the priest's “sexual misconduct involving an adult.”

The diocese won't give more information.

His parish held two prayer services for him after he was suspended.

For those who stumbled upon me and didn't follow me on that other place, I am an independent Catholic journalist whose main focus these days is helping adult victims of priest abuse.

I've been involved in three successful fights to remove abusive priests from ministry (including my own case).

Twitter was absolutely instrumental in my effort to help this Reno Catholic priest's abuse victim receive justice and get the guy removed. We made a strategic decision to embrace Twitter's cranky nature to gain attention. But I find Twitter more trouble than it's worth these days. Let that site die.

Hi

It goes in waves. Sometimes I can talk about “church stuff” as if I’m discussing the weather. Sometimes I can’t help but to get enraged.

I take it this place is like the other place before Nazis starting taking over.

Thank you for the invite!