Report: Monticello Priest Accused of Misconduct Teaches Sex Education to Wright County Teens

Minnesota Public Radio filed a report today stating longtime Monticello pastor and music director Harry Walsh, who was not one of 30 priests on a list of those the St. Paul/Minneapolis Archdiocese considers “credibly accused” of sexual misconduct, but has been laicized by the church due to his actions, has been teaching sexual education in Wright County.

Walsh signed a new two-year, $1,508 per month contract to continue in his sex ed role earlier this year, according to public records, offering “medically accurate sexuality education, pregnancy prevention and STI prevention to high risk youth or adults,” MPR reports.

Walsh is accused of kissing a Detroit area teenager in the 1960s, and  for touching a pre-teen boy in the 1980s during a stint in South St. Paul. 

He was eventually laicized just last year because of a scandal that occurred at St. Henry’s in Monticello. Reports show, thanks to evidence collected by MPR, that Walsh had an affair with a parishoner, a married, then eventually, divorced woman.

Files collected by MPR show that the Archdiocese knew of Walsh’s misconduct, yet he worked for years after his assignment ended in 1991 as St. Henry’s musical director. Archbishop Harry Flynn and Archbishop John Nienstedt both had supervisory priests checking in on Walsh, and Nienstedt went so far as to call Walsh’s vow of celibacy something he felt Walsh thought was “optional.”

Waslsh actually left Monticello in 1991 to receive training in human sexuality and education.

Walsh’s dissertation, a result of this study, actually questions celibacy in the eyes of God and the Catholic Church. 

MPR reports that Nienstedt wrote in a letter to the Vatican, later asking for Walsh to be laicized, “The Archdiocese supported him during this period, believing that providing Father Walsh with the opportunity to explore his sexuality academically would lead him to return to priestly ministry. Ultimately the opposite was true.”

Walsh actually contributed his views to a book, “"How I Got Into Sex: Leading Researchers, Sex Therapists, Educators, Prostitutes, Sex Toy Designers, Sex Surrogates, Transsexuals, Criminologists, Clergy, and more...,” which can be found on Amazon.com.

After his return, and on into the early 2000s, Walsh bounced from dedication to the church to his relationship with the Monticello parishoner (now divorced). The church finally asked Flynn to resign in 2010. After taking time, he eventually did, in 2012.  

A Wright County Public Health Director who signed Walsh's most recent contract told MPR she "does not know" what she will do with the new information that he is a credibly accused priest in the eyes of the Archdiocese.