Summary: NPR and the AP both are breaking news that the Pope has been implicated in a letter he wrote refusing to defrock a Californian Priest who had plead no contest to charges that he tied up two little boys and molested them. NPR Reports: A recently discovered 1985 letter in which the future Pope Benedict declined to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually abusing children. The document, signed by the man then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, cited concerns about "the good of the universal church" in refusing a request from the bishop of Oakland, Calif., to remove Father Stephen Kiesle from the priesthood. Kiesle had been sentenced to three years' probation in 1978 after pleading no contest to charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two boys. The priest was defrocked in 1987 and convicted in 2004 of molesting a young girl in 1995.
