Vatican is cooperating with US officials on Indian priest case

The Vatican is cooperating with American authorities seeking to extradite a priest, who is currently in India and has been accused of molesting two girls, lawyer for the Roman Catholic Hierarchy has said.

"The Holy See has cooperated with the requests of law enforcement authorities seeking the extradition of Father Jeyapaul to the United States, and in fact provided his exact location in India to assist such efforts," a statement from Vatican lawyer Jeffrey Lena said on the Jeyapaul Case.

Father Joseph Jeyapaul, who is currently in Tamil Nadu, has been charged with two counts of criminal sexual conduct stemming from accusations he assaulted a young, female
parishioner in the fall of 2004 at the Blessed Sacrament
Church in Greenbush, Minnesota, where he was working.

Each charge carries a sentence of up to 30 years.

Jeyapaul was temporarily assigned to the Diocese of Crookston in Minnesota in 2004 and was accused of repeatedly molesting a 16-year-old girl in the rectory.

According to the criminal complaint, the teenage girl accused Jeyapaul of threatening to kill her family if she did not come into the rectory, where he then forced her to perform oral sex on him and groped her in the fall of 2004. 

"The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested in this matter that Father Jeyapaul agree to laicisation, demonstrating that the Congregation believed that the accusations were serious enough to merit dismissal from the clerical state.

However, as a matter of longstanding canon law, such decisions are made by the local bishop, who is deemed to be generally in the best position to adjudicate the case relating to the priest in question," the statement added.

Lena further said the decision regarding the canonical penalties imposed upon Father Jeyapaul was made by the Bishop of Ootacamund, whose diocese is located in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu in India.

Jeyapaul has spent the past five years working in Catholic schools in India despite warnings from a US bishop, court documents said. 

According to a letter released by a lawyer representing the victim in a civil lawsuit, Bishop Victor Balke of Minnesota had first reported the allegations to the Vatican and the priest's Indian bishop in 2005 stating that Jeyapaul could pose a "serious risk" to the women and girls of his Indian parish.

However, despite numerous efforts by a Minnesota prosecutor to have him extradited on charges of child rape, Jeyapaul remained as a secretary of the diocese of Ootacamund's Education Commission.

"The only ones who knew about him being a rapist, were the bishop, the Vatican and that's it. They kept it a secret because they were concerned about the protection of their reputation and not about the children who are at grave peril," Minnesota lawyer Jeff Anderson, who is representing Jeyapaul's victim said.

Balke wrote in a December 2005 letter to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that Jeyapaul did
not heed his request to return to Minnesota "so that he can be
made accountable for his actions."

The Vatican morality and disciplinary watchdog wrote back five months later to say it had contacted Jeyapaul's bishop with the request that his "priestly life be monitored so that he does not constitute a risk to minors and does not create scandal among the faithful," the court documents showed.

Bishop A Amalraj, head of the Ootacamund diocese in Tamil Nadu has said Jeyapaul is still working in the education commission.

"His job is to prepare lists for the appointment of teachers in schools run by the diocese but this does not put him in contact with women or children," Amalraj said. 

The bishop said he had complied with the Vatican directive to monitor the priest and had housed him at his own residence.

"There are no complaints of any kind against him in India. But since there are these accusations against him, we thought it best to keep him in the bishop's house," Amalaraj said.

The bishop however added that if the charges against Jeyapaul are proved, he should be punished. 

"Justice should be done. If the charges against him are proved, he will be punished," he said.