by Christine Schenk
As I sat listening to Jennifer Haselberger accept FutureChurch's Fr. Louis J. Trivison Award on Sept. 19, I couldn't help but reflect how proud Father Louie would have been.
Jennifer is a canon lawyer and the whistleblowing former chancellor of the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese. She resigned in 2013 after Archbishop John Nienstedt refused to take seriously her findings of an intentional cover-up of clergy sex abuse by archdiocesan officials. She hoped her resignation would "prompt an external investigation and lead to internal changes." When that failed to materialize, she collaborated with Minnesota Public Radio in a pivotal, and unprecedented, exposé of the archdiocese's callous mishandling of sexual misconduct by clergy.
"For me, the decision to go public was an easy one," she said. "After years of feeling embarrassed by the contradictions between the archdiocese's external positions and internal actions, I wanted to be able to look the people in my community in the eye again."
Read and comment on the full story at National Catholic Reporter.