Pope appoints new bishop for Kansas City-St. Joseph following abuse scandals

KANSAS CITY, Mo. The man who soon will lead northwest Missouri’s 133,000 Catholics said Tuesday that he recognizes that a significant need for healing still exists in the diocese following recent child abuse scandals.

“But I also believe that the one that truly heals is Jesus,” Bishop James V. Johnston said after being introduced Tuesday morning at the Catholic Center as the seventh bishop of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese. “And so I see my role as the bishop as sort of being a physician’s assistant to be a person that facilitates some of that healing.”

Johnston will move north from the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Giradeau, which he has led for seven years, later this year. His installation is set for Nov. 4.

Pope Francis announced Johnston’s appointment Tuesday, just days ahead of the pontiff’s first visit to the United States next week.

Johnston, 55, will succeed Bishop Robert Finn, who resigned in April nearly three years after being convicted of failing to report suspected child abuse by a priest.

A former engineer, Johnston has served as an assistant pastor, pastor, religion teacher, chancellor and moderator of the curia since his 1990 ordination to the priesthood.

During his Springfield tenure, Johnston helped establish Catholic Charities of Southern Missouri, encouraged candidates to become priests and supported the Catholic Worker movement.

He also spoke against the death penalty, same sex-marriage and a proposed Springfield anti-discrimination ordinance that would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to the city’s list of protected classes.

When President Barack Obama announced support for gay marriage in 2012, Johnston called it a regrettable decision and said, “Equating same sex unions with true marriage is unjust, and will lead to a further deconstruction of our nation’s culture and well-being.”

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann introduced Johnston to Chancery staff Tuesday morning in the Catholic Center in downtown Kansas City. Naumann, of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, has been the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese’s apostolic administrator since Finn’s resignation.

Johnston comes to a diocese with 98 parishes and missions and a Catholic population of more than 133,000 people, about double the size of Johnston’s current diocese.

In 2005, the U.S. Department of the Interior awarded Johnston and two priests the Citizens Award for Bravery for helping save a family in danger of plunging over a waterfall in Glacier National Park in Montana.

As a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Johnston served on Committee on Child and Youth Protection and the Subcommittee on the Catechism.

He takes over leadership of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese as it continues to recover from a child sexual abuse scandal that many believe led to Finn’s early retirement.

Finn was convicted in September 2012 for failing to notify authorities about a priest who later pleaded guilty to production of child pornography. That priest, Shawn Ratigan, was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison and has been removed from the priesthood.

The conviction made Finn the most senior U.S. Roman Catholic prelate convicted of criminal charges related to the church’s child sexual abuse scandal.

Finn stepped down as leader of the diocese on April 21. Neither Finn nor the Vatican provided a specific reason for the resignation, but the Vatican said that Finn cited the code of canon law that allows bishops to resign early for illness or some “grave” reason that makes them unfit for office.

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