Bishop Richard Stika of Knoxville, Tennessee, has resigned under pressure following allegations he mishandled sex abuse allegations and several of his priests complained about his leadership and behavior, sparking a Vatican investigation.
Two days after being discharged from the hospital, Pope Francis resumed his cherished Sunday custom of greeting the public in St. Peter’s Square.
In addition to the priests’ complaints, Stika is the subject of at least two lawsuits that accuse him of mishandling sexual abuse allegations and seeking to silence the accusers. In one, a former employee at the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Knoxville — who uses the pseudonym John Doe — accused a seminarian there of harassing and raping him in 2019.
In a second lawsuit, a Honduran immigrant seeking asylum in the United States accused a priest in the diocese of locking her in a room and sexually assaulting her after she went to him for grief counseling in 2020. The woman went to the police, and the diocese was aware of the accusation but took no action against the priest until after he was indicted on sexual battery charges in 2022, according to the lawsuit.
The suit claims the diocese was trying to either intimidate her into dropping both lawsuits or get her arrested and deported.
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