Knoxville Bishop Resigns Amid Turmoil
Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the bishop of Knoxville, Tenn., the Vatican announced on Tuesday.
The resignation of Bishop Richard F. Stika comes after two years of turmoil in the small diocese in East Tennessee, where the bishop has been sued for his handling of sexual misconduct allegations, and faced internal criticism of his leadership more broadly.
Priests in the diocese also made unusually direct complaints about him and asked a Vatican representative last year for “merciful relief” from his leadership. The upheaval culminated in a Vatican investigation last year, according to the Catholic publication The Pillar.
A lawsuit filed in 2022 accused him of trying to obstruct a diocesan investigation into a seminary student accused of raping and harassing a church musician in 2019. The suit said that Bishop Stika fired an investigator appointed by the diocese to look into the case, and that the bishop defamed and tried to intimidate the musician. He has said that he never covered up sexual abuse.
Source: The New York Times
