Group Wants Investigation Into Retired Superior Priest

A support group says a retired Catholic bishop in Superior might have misled church members about the settlements paid to victims of priest sexual abuse.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests wants an investigation into Raphael Fliss.

That’s after the Duluth News Tribune said the Superior Diocese and the Reverend Tom Ericksen agreed to pay $3 million in 1989 to victims James and Paul Eck.

According to the Survivors Network, Fliss told members of his diocese in 2004 that it paid $615,000 in an abuse case involving one priest in the early 1980’s – and it made no reference to the Eck case in the late ‘80’s.

Network director Peter Isley says Fliss’s report appears to be, “misleading if not false.” Isley says it puts previous reports to church auditors in doubt, and it raises questions about how much money was spent to, “conceal the activities of these offenders.”

Fliss told the Duluth paper he does remember much about Ericksen or the 1989 abuse case, and he never remembered a settlement being as large as $3 million.

But, “at my age, maybe I’ve lost some of that.” Fliss was the bishop of the Superior Diocese for 22 years before retiring in 2007.

SIC: WTAQ