Local Woman Asks for Pope’s Resignation
“Another woman, the latest to accuse the Pope of covering up the molestation of church pastors, says she was abused by a former East Bay priest. She is demanding the resignation of Pope Benedict the Sixteenth”
“Melinda Costello, who now lives in San Francisco, was a little girl when she says she molested by Stephen Kiesele, the priest at her church in Fremont. It took almost 20 years for Kiesele to be defrocked even though he was accused of molesting others.
Now Costello is the latest to express her shock that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now the Pope— didn’t move quickly to remove Kiesele from the priesthood.
“I am appalled to find out that Ratzinger knew about Kiesele and that he did absolutely nothing about it for four or five years,” she said. “He was more concerned about the face of the church than about children of the church.”