* New York

* April 1, 2009

THE founder of a religious order that treats Catholic priests who molest children concluded in the 1950s that offenders were unlikely to change and should not be returned to the ministry, according to his letters, which were obtained by plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Father Gerald Fitzgerald, founder of the Servants of the Paraclete, was so sure of the priests’ inability to control themselves that he tried to buy an island to isolate them.

Father Fitzgerald discussed the issue with Pope Paul VI and in correspondence with several bishops, according to the independent National Catholic Reporter on Monday.

The documents challenge recent statements by US bishops that before the clergy sex abuse scandal in the 1980s and again in 2002, they were unaware of the risks of moving predators among parishes. Father Fitzgerald wrote in a letter in 1952 to Bishop Robert Dwyer of Reno, Nevada, that “real conversions will be found to be extremely rare”.

“Hence, leaving them on duty or wandering from diocese to diocese is contributing to scandal or at least to the approximate danger of scandal,” he wrote.

The Los Angeles law firm Kiesel, Boucher & Larson persuaded a judge in New Mexico to unseal the letters in 2007, one of its lawyers Helen Zukin said.

The lawyers verified the documents at depositions with Father Fitzgerald’s successor as the Paracletes’ servant general, Ms Zukin said.

Father Fitzgerald set up Paraclete in the late 1940s in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, mainly to help clergy with alcoholism and emotional troubles. Bishops began sending him priests who had molested young people or who could not keep their celibacy vows.

In a 1957 letter to Bishop Matthew Brady of Manchester, New Hampshire, Father Fitzgerald wrote that abusive priests only pretended to repent and change. He said the church would have to set up a uniform code of discipline and penalties.

More than 40 years later, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops set up a national discipline and child protection policy after news reports and court files unsealed in 2002 showed that many bishops had moved guilty priests around without telling parents or police.

Under the new plan, offenders are barred from church work or are ousted from the priesthood. American dioceses have paid more than $US2.6 billion ($A3.8 billion) in abuse-related costs since 1950.

By the 1960s, Father Fitzgerald, who died in 1969, was losing control of the religious order, and medical and psychological professionals began working at the centre — a change he had resisted. These experts said some abusers could return to ministry.

The centre closed in the 1990s in the face of lawsuits over priests who had molested children while staying at Jemez Springs or after being treated there.

AP