The Superior diocese is one of 49 Catholic dioceses and archdioceses in 24 states and the District of Columbia that are mentioned in "Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church."
The book, by abuse survivor Leon Podles, is being released today at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Superior is mentioned mostly in connection with the late Rev. Irving Klister, said Fran Griffin, who is handling media inquires about the book. Klister was a one-time diocese chancellor and founding editor of the Superior Catholic Herald who abruptly left for Texas in the 1950s at the time of his confessed abuse of a 14-year-old boy. He later was convicted on child pornography charges.
"He was a lifelong abuser," Griffin said. "He was ordained there in Superior. He was in Superior for a while, then he was transferred down to Texas."
The book's coverage of Klister is mostly on his activities in Texas, some of it new information, Griffin said.
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Podles, in a statement written for release at today's news conference, said he wrote the 675-page book to "help victims feel that their voice has at last been heard. Victims were long ignored and even today are too often regarded as whiners and money-grubbers. I am the only one who has described exactly what the victims went through."
Klister is not the only priest with ties to the Superior diocese against whom allegations of sexual abuse were made. In 2005, St. Croix Circuit Judge Eric Lundell found enough evidence to suggest that the late Ryan Erickson had murdered two funeral home workers in Hudson, Wis.
The 31-year-old priest was found hanged in December 2004 at his parish in Hurley several days after police questioned him -- and he denied involvement -- in the deaths.
