“The great disappointment in the situation in Knoxville, this present situation, is that we can’t look back at all that’s happened and say that we saw red flags, we reported them, and the hierarchy responded appropriately,” Father Brent Shelton said three months after the resignation of Bishop Richard Stika.
“I can’t say that because, sadly, that’s not how things unfolded,” he continued. “There were the issues with the bishop, and then priests and others who protected the bishop, by making it harder to raise concerns — who got sucked into a poisonous culture.”