Victims group says 5 credibly accused priests are missing from Twin Cities archdiocese public list

The two who are alive are former pastors William Tanguay and Elwood “Woody” Bernas, according to SNAP.

The Providence, R.I., bishop deemed Tanguay in 2019 to have credible allegations of sexual abuse and listed him on its website, according to SNAP. He worked in pastoral care of Hmong refugees in Minneapolis in 1983 and 1984.

Bernas was deemed in 2018 credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor by the Steubenville, Ohio, bishop, and posted on that diocesan website. He left the ministry in 1989 and became a substitute organist at the Cathedral of St. Paul and at a local Lutheran church before moving to Washington state in 2009, according to SNAP.

The Pioneer Press was unable to reach Tanguay or Bernas for comment Wednesday.

The deceased priests are:

—James William Murphy, who the bishops of Nashville and Knoxville, Tenn., deemed credibly accused in 2018 and 2020, respectively. He worked at at a retreat center in the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese.

—Casimir Plakut, who was added to the list of credibly accused in 2017 by St. John’s Abbey of Collegeville, Minn., and the Diocese of Crookston, Minn. He also previously worked for the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, according to SNAP.

—Alphonsus P. Ferguson, who the Nebraska-based Columban religious order to which he belonged deemed credibly accused in 2022, according to SNAP. A man sued the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese in 2014, saying Ferguson sexually assaulted him when he was an altar boy at Guardian Angels Church in Hastings.

It’s important to also publicize the names of priests who were credibly accused and are now deceased because “the unacknowledged wound rarely heals or heals slowly,” Clohessy said.

“This has happened dozens and dozens of times in our group: A Catholic grandmother in St. Paul sees this name and says, ‘He’s the one who used to take Sally to the movies every Saturday that one summer, right?’ Or ‘he’s the one that used to take Billy camping those times.” And a grandmother or a mom … picks up the phone and says, ‘This guy is a molester. Did he do anything to you?'”

That kind of outreach has “broken the logjam of people who were suffering in silence and shame and secrecy for decades,” Clohessy said.

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